Wallace Stevens



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American poet Wallace Stevens often wrote about a traditional image or symbol in his poetry in order to explore the ways our imaginations are shaped by cultural symbols. In this excerpt from Stevens’s ”Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird“ (1923) recited by an actor, Stevens also plays with the meanings of the symbolic number 13, often read as a bad omen. Within the Western literary tradition of poetic forms the number 13 evokes the familiar 14-line sonnet, perhaps suggesting that there is a 14th way of looking at a blackbird that the reader must find.

Appears in these articles:

Poetry; Stevens, Wallace

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