3 December 2019 (snow)
Kristen Lindquist
Wallace Stevens’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” is a classic of modern poetry and clearly influenced by Japanese haiku, which was just beginning to intrigue American poets and writers in the early 1900’s. Also, the poem’s a long-time favorite of mine.
During today’s snowstorm, this stanza from the poem comes to mind:
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
“It was snowing / And it was going to snow.” Ah, winter in Maine.
all day snow
a white fox emerging
from a dream