Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

The poem is a lyric, as it’s short and expresses the personal feelings of the poet and the poet’s speaker—that is, the speaker reveals 13 ways they feel a person can look at a blackbird. Since the poem has a defined goal, it qualifies as a didactic poem—it’s like a lesson, with Stevens teaching the reader 13 different ways to perceive a blackbird.

The poem also reads as a collection of 13 haikus. The haiku is a type of poem that began in Japan. A standard haiku has three lines, with five syllables for the first and last lines and seven syllables for the middle line. Like Stevens’s sections in this poem, haikus center on sharp portraits often involving nature. Matsuo Bashō is a famous Japanese haiku poet, and in his haiku “On a withered branch” (trans. John T. Carpenter, Met Museum, ca 1680), he focuses not on a blackbird but a crow:

On a withered branch,

a crow has come to perch—

at dusk in autumn.

Haiku uses imagery—precise language to create a vivid image—and so does Stevens. How to See is a critical theme in the poem, and Stevens helps the reader see when he details the “twenty snowy mountains” (Line 1) and zooms in on the “eye of the blackbird” (Line 3).