Why are there more sad, mad, and bad smilies than glad smilies?
Does this reflect someone's judgement about the default human condition? "Odds are" you feel [this way]?
Not much room here for those who were born somewhere on the Snark Spectrum. Just for instance: Where is Playfully Sarcastic? Cheerfully Wry? Weirded-out Sidelong Glance?
I feel so excluded.
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. fell by 1.2 percent in March 2023 to 108.4 (2016=100), following a decline of 0.5 percent in February. The LEI is down 4.5 percent over the six-month period between September 2022 and March 2023—a steeper rate of decline than its 3.5 percent contraction over the previous six months (March–September 2022).
And it’s going to get worse, the Board says. “The Conference Board forecasts that economic weakness will intensify and spread more widely throughout the US economy over the coming months...”
Okay how can it spread MORE widely?
I forget. Is this business as usual and the recession is coming? Ord is this the recession and the Depression is coming? Does it matter?
We will go through this one number at a time. This is offered without knowing anything about the poet. The original will be in italic type.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
The blackbird's eye (like most birds) does not actually move in its socket. If the eye is moving, the whole head is moving. I suspect the twenty snowy mountains are old white-haired literary men, and the poet sees himself as the only one who can see the way to social progress.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
blackbird : tree :: mind : Wallace Stevens.
But blackbirds will fly off.
Therefore Wallace Stevens will lose his mind.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
I think he must mean raven. Or turkey vulture. Maybe when he writes "blackbird he simply means "black [space] bird."
It was a small part of the pantomime.
Pantomime because silent, I would guess. But pantomime is artificial. Is the poet implying that the visible world is not real?
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird walk into a bar.
The bartender says, "What'll it be?"
All three say, "Gimme a shot of Old Crow."
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
Blackbirds do not whistle. Perhaps the poet is remembering a Black Phoebe? But that would make it a black-and-white bird.
At any rate:
inflection : innuendo :: blackbird whistle : silence;
that is, to simplify,
voiced : unvoiced :: voiced : unvoiced;
or more simply,
1 = 1.
A tautology is not a very deep statement.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
Barbaric?
Also, it was autumn a minute ago, and now it's winter.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
The antistrophe of this verse is an indecipherable clause.
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?
Residents of Haddam, Connecticut, would perhaps have better appreciated the in-joke here. I think the poet is asking this: Why think about those who are fighting and dying in the Great War when you should be concerned about their mothers and sweethearts here at home. Perhaps I am crediting the poet with far more philanthropic sentiment than he has demonstrated.
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
The poet recognizes war rhetoric and patriotic marches, but also acknowledges that with war comes death (and carrion eaters).
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
Two questions: a.) Does the poet believe in object permanence? Does he believe the blackbird continues to exist when it crosses out of his visible horizon?; b.) Does the poet believe that at the centers of others of the "many circles" there are Others who are potential blackbird observers who may have something to contribute to the conversation? Or are the "many circles" simply the poet's conjecture of other places he himself may someday occupy?
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
(A train passing a green lighted track signal at night.)
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
The power and the unstoppable momentum of the rushing train both inspires and frightens the poet. Embarrassed by these emotions, the poet insists that other poets and literary types would have been scared to be scared too, if they had been so close to that train that night.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Clutching his gin bottle and high as a kite...
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
...The poet is scared of his own shadow.
Or: The poet, buying into pacifist rhetoric, imagines that the Great War is the actual end of civilization.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
Ah, now it is Spring! The thaw has opened the waterway, and even the poet's depressive episodes must be temporarily eased.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
Wait! it was Spring a minute ago...
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
And -- his depression is back. He's already starting to want that gin bottle again.
