I WAS OF (THREE) MIND(S)

 42 of #100daychallenge

Strange dreams last night. In one, I was cozying up to Wallace Stevens. I can't think of a single Stevens poems I can even reference. I would probably get him confused with, at least momentarily, William Carlos Williams. What does it all mean? I don't even have a volume of Stevens work in my A-list poetry collection next to me here.

I also had a dream about a friend I recently fired, or put on sabbatical. In the dream I was surprised to be having a normal conversation with her, given our current estrangement. Maybe she isn't allowed to appear in dreams, either, although the dreaming mind has a mind of its own.

As I am post behind, I though to get writing early. I have much housework to do, given that I did nothing at all on that front. You know you need to snap to when you see seldom used coffee cups appearing on the sink. 

Later.

I have done some research on Wallace Stevens. My conclusion is that we would not be attracted to one another, so no cozying of any kind. And what is his gig barging in to my dream space? Cursory research and the reading of some of his poems do not support a fella that believes in equality among the genders. At least at the early part of his life, he had some Romantic notions about being the noble "male poet." Here's his wiki if you find yourself further interested.

Several of the poems I looked at did not cut the mustard of this my poetic standards ... and those are loose like others of my standards. The poems I perused leaned far too heavily on not-even-tired-but-broken-down tropes about females. I can take a bit of era proscribed sexism and fantasy, but no John Donne he.

Here is one of his more famous poems.

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, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. Copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens. 

I want to go watch the American Experience Episode about The Tulsa Massacre so this will be short.

I had Sebastian, the yardman, dig a new garden bed for me. More photos as it develops.