Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Literary Elements

The speaker is a detached poetic voice that serves as the reader's guide from one "way of looking" to the next. It could represent one person or many, but is a voice that easily switches among different points of view.

Free verse. Thirteen short stanzas, usually with short sentences and no meter or rhyme. Haiku-like qualities of minimalism, but no strict haiku formula.

"I was of three minds, / Like a tree / In which there are three blackbirds."—blackbirds in branches of the tree represent branches of thought

"pantomime"—a metaphor for nature as a theatrical performance

"bawds of euphony"—a metaphor for mediocre poets or readers as those who buy and sell cheap pleasures

"It was evening all afternoon"—metaphorically conflating the two times of day to demonstrate the dark falling early

Alliteration / consonance:

"three" / "tree" / "there"—playing with slight variations among these words in section II

"inflections" / "innuendoes"—alliteration emphasizes how close the two paired concepts are

"know noble"

Assonance:

"twenty snowy"—double "-y" ending

"blackbird whirled"—double /ir/ sound

"barbaric glass"—double short /a/ sound

"fear pierced"—double /ear/ sound

"A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one"—ironic and unexpected disruption of the usual pairing of man and woman

Modernist poetry

Connecticut, possibly the town of Haddam; wintry or snowy landscape

Matter-of-fact; contemplative

The poet or reader who has an open mind and the willingness to change his or her perspective; vs. closed-minded poets and readers who ignore the blackbird

The major conflict is that of the speaker trying to make sense of the blackbird while accepting the limitations of his own ability to understand it fully. He also confronts other types of poets or readers who do not appreciate the blackbird or ignore it, and may try to convince them the blackbird is worth writing poetry about.

The greatest tensions are addressed and resolved in the middle of the poem, between sections V-IX. The speaker's ability to 'decipher' the blackbird is tested in section VI and the mood becomes one of crisis and threat. The speaker deflects this threat by challenging other men to see the blackbird the way he does (VII), and then comes to terms with the limits of his own knowledge, the mysterious role the blackbird has in his perception (VIII - IX).

In section I, the rapid motion of our view as it shifts from a huge mountain panorama to a tiny bird eye foreshadows the rapid changes in perspective that will happen throughout the poem, and the use of the blackbird eye as an image is another hint that sight and perception will be the key tools of the poem.

"It was a small part of the pantomime"—nature is vast and complex, so it seems almost too obvious to say that the blackbird is only a "small part" of it

"It marked the edge / Of one of many circles"—"one of many" is an understatement because if the flight path marks the edge of an imagined geometric circle, or the edge of the viewer's line of sight, then an infinite number of such circles are possible

No direct allusions, but for context for the "golden birds," see section on "Real and Imagined Birds."

"the eye of the blackbird"—most birds cannot move their eyes without moving their heads, so it is likely that more of the blackbird than the eye is moving, but this synecdoche focuses our attention on the eye itself

"glass coach"—the glass of the windows is used to stand for the entire carriage or train car

"barbaric glass"—"barbaric" usually describes a person or society as brutal and warlike, so it indirectly personifies the glass as having the power to kill or brutalize

"The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird"—there are almost certainly other things moving in the mountain range, no matter how small, but this drastic statement focuses our attention sharply onto the significant blackbird

"whirled" might evoke the sound of the moving wind