Wallace Stevens: Background information when reading Thirteen Ways of Looking

Wallace Stevens

This article relates to Thirteen Ways of Looking

The title of the story collection, Thirteen Ways of Looking, is a reference to a poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. This poem, a stanza of which prefaces each chapter of McCann's novella, was written by Wallace Stevens in 1923.

Stevens, an American poet, was born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1879. A Harvard graduate and businessman, he does not conform to the stereotype of the poor poet starving in a garret. Instead, Stevens worked for 40 years at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Insurance Company, ultimately becoming the company's Vice President.

Before this, though, Stevens lived and worked in New York City and began a separate career as a published poet in the modernist tradition. (Modernist poetry is defined by experimental forms and style, as well as a complex and open-ended themes.) Stevens first collection of fifty poems, Harmonium, was published in 1923. Notable poems in Harmonium include The Comedian as the Letter C, Peter Quince at the Clavier and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

Described as haiku-esque, each of the thirteen short stanzas of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird demonstrates Steven's characteristic philosophical approach to poetry, his wide vocabulary and his technical precision.

Stevens' reputation grew throughout the 20th century. In 1975, the literary critic Harold Bloom described him as "the best and most representative poet of our time." In the UK, the critic Frank Kermode described his "long affair" with Stevens' poetry, but also highlighted the obscurity in the work, even as he enjoyed the "pleasing but bewildering" effect Stevens' poems had upon him. A modernist poet - in the opinion of AN Wilson, "outsoaring" TS Eliot and Ezra Pound - Stevens' later works include The Idea of Order at Key West and The Man with the Blue Guitar.

Both a Pulitzer Prize winner and twice the recipient of the National Book Award for Poetry, Wallace Stevens died of stomach cancer in Hartford, Connecticut in 1955.

We explore another of Wallace Stevens poems in the Beyond the Book for The Blue Guitar.

Wallace Stevens, courtesy of Gobonobo
Plaque in NYC, with stanza from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, courtesy of Lesekreis.

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This "beyond the book article" relates to Thirteen Ways of Looking. It originally ran in November 2015 and has been updated for the September 2016 paperback edition. Go to magazine.