The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream

My name isn’t Alice, but I’ve been living in Wonderland.  I must decide whether to change my name or return to reality.

Love love love

Oh I want this… If you’d like to buy it (for me or not) visit this site!

Genius

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 innuendos,

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.

—Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens

I adore Wallace Stevens.  Not only did he possess a mind that most poets can only envy, but he was absolutely adorable.  He worked at an insurance company and wrote beautiful poems on the side.  While he gained fame during his life, those he worked with were not the poetry reading type, apparently.  When he died, fans swarmed his office looking for scraps of writing or unpublished poetry, and his office mates said “Wally was a poet?”  !

I love the cubist view of this poem.  The way it translates an artistic movement into words is heartbreakingly beautiful.  Another, longer yet equally breathtaking work by Wallace Stevens is Sunday Morning.  Please, take the time to read this more than once.  Maybe we could discuss it?

I hope that you appreciate the genius that Wallace Stevens was/is.