Isaac Starnes > Isaac's Quotes

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"


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

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

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

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.”
― Wallace Stevens

“The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.”
― Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems

“We live in an old chaos of the sun.”
― Wallace Stevens

“I am what is around me.”
― Wallace Stevens

“The imperfect is our paradise.”
― Wallace Stevens

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“I is another.”
― Arthur Rimbaud

“I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat

“Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.”
― Charles Simic

“A poem is an invitation to a voyage. As in life, we travel to see fresh sights.”
― Charles Simic

“I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“Because the light is always with us
and the hush of an early morning

time propitious to plain speech

space between the premonition
and the event

the small lovely realm
of the possible.”
― Charles Simic

“When you play chess alone it's always your move.”
― Charles Simic, Jackstraws: Poems

“Each moment is a place
you've never been.”
― Mark Strand, New Selected Poems

“When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.”
― Mark Strand, Selected Poems of Mark Strand

“The Coming of Light

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.”
― Mark Strand, The Late Hour

“We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.”
― Mark Strand