youkrst wrote:"13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

wow, i loved that, cheers.

Glad somebody can get something out of it!

DWill wrote:Glad somebody can get something out of it!

reminds me of the old Don McLean thing where he stopped telling people what "american pie" was all about, because when they told him what is was all about (to them) he often found it much more interesting than his own original intention.

if beauty can be in the eye of the beholder then perhaps meaning is somewhat in the mind of the interpreter in a manner of non-dogmatic speaking.

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

http://missmerfaery.squidoo.com/raven-symbolism-lore

Shamanism and Native American spirituality speak of animal totems. These are important nature symbols used by people to get in touch with specific required qualities found within an animal. A person's totem animal will have qualities they need, that they connect with, or feel a deep affinity toward. You can work with more than one totem animal, although many people tend to have a main totem that they work with all their life.

Raven is known as the "keeper of secrets" in numerous native tribes.

As a totem, Raven is the teacher of mysticism. Having such a wealth of myth and lore surrounding him throughout many cultures and ages, Raven is the ideal teacher of this subject.

The black color of ravens and their carrion diet associates them with darkness. This dark void represents the the unconscious.

Raven brings heightened awareness and a deeper understanding of our consciousness. Raven allows us to see into the hearts of others using our newly found perception, helping us to empathise with their feelings.

Raven encourages us to experience transformation, so that we can be reunited with the mysteries of the universe, and rid ourselves of our inner demons.

am i up to 13 ways yet

Wallace Stevens, the WASP insurance exec, would probably be amazed at your sources. But as you so rightly say, the meaning isn't up to him.

If we could we only all do better in that non-dogmatic manner of speaking....

DWill wrote:No, more likely I suppose is that I just don't get it and am not motivated to get it. For example, Wallace Stevens' famous poem "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

Okay, yes, this is mostly baffling. But maybe the point is not to understand it so much as go with it. With every reading, I find that I like it a little more because it is so weird.

Imagine the first scene, one of absolute stillness . . .

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

That gives me a little thrill. It's epic like the calm before the Apocalypse. I've started thinking of the blackbird as a metaphor for death. Thanks, youkrst, for those references. I have weird little book that I splurged on a few years back, THE FOLKLORE OF BIRDS, by Edward Armstrong. I'll consult this book later.

Note that the word "blackbird" is contained exactly once in each stanza. Still not sure what it all means though. It's a weird and surreal kind of poem. Dreamlike. So if we were to think of this as a performance, maybe it would be a dream sequence.

I'm reminded of this famous poem. Coleridge said the idea for the poem came to him in a dream, but he was interrupted the next morning by a visit from the person from Porlock, and by the time the person left, he had forgotten most of it. So it is referred to as a fragment by its author. But maybe the story of the person from Porlock is part of this poem's performance?



Kubla Khan
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Would we call this an imagist poem? Even though Stevens isn't considered to be in that school, the poem does seem to me to pin its meaning on a series of images. It's mostly a matter of taste, after all. I like to have the poet operating closer to the oral origins of poetry instead of way out on the literary limb. It would seem out of place to me to hear this recited.

I've wondered what the true composition history of "Kubla Khan" might be. Maybe it's true as Coleridge said that the poem came to him in a vision and wrote itself. But maybe, too, there was more conscious crafting going on. In any case, the fleetingness of artistic inspiration is itself a good topic for poetry.

It might be of interest that "KK" is no. 7 on William Harmon's Top 500 Poems.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

GET DOWN!

A place where nobody dared to go
The love that we came to know
They call it Xanadu

And now
Open your eyes and see
What we have made is real
We are in Xanadu

His disciples said to him: "On what day will the kingdom come?" "It will not come when it is expected. No one will say: 'See, it is here!' or: 'Look, it is there!' but the Kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it."

nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is!' For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst."

stuck in the middle with YOU!

Xanadu, Kingdom of God, Nirvana etc etc a rose by any other name...

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

So tell me, is there any lyric out there you don't know?

Rush has a song called Xanadu too. Don't know if youkrst got that one.

good catch geo, cheers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEuOoMprDqg&feature=kp

I had heard the whispered tales of immortality
The deepest mystery
From an ancient book I took a clue
I scaled the frozen mountain tops of eastern lands unknown
Time and Man alone
Searching for the lost Xanadu

Tom Sawyers one and all.

Catch the mist, catch the myth
Catch the mystery, catch the drift.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auLBLk4ibAk

here's a bit of Alan Moore that reads like a poem

"If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning.
They're right. It does.
However much you beg it to stop.
It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember.
It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life...
All trying not to think about what's waiting at the bottom.
Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other's arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor.
Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks.
And then the world turns...
And somebody falls off...
And oh God it's such a long way down.
Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller...
Receding in our memories until they're no longer visible.
We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth.
Trying to measure how far we have to fall.
No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives...
Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold.
"Time's a great healer."
"At least it was quick."
"The world keeps turning.
Oh Alec— Alec's dead."