"Inflection and Innuendo"

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Graphite drawings inspired by the Wallace Stevens poem:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Artist's Statement
Michael Knight

This was the show that I thought would not take place. Out of the mood, I nonetheless coaxed graphite into the tornado images I love but thought retired. Still drawn to the power and their significance as a metaphor for the churning void of the unknown, I worked, and yet I was not convinced.

Seeking diversion and finding Stevens, the "Blackbird" resonated and soared into my minds eye as a symbol of universal constant and survivor. Suddenly they were everywhere, and a must for my landscapes.

As I continued these reluctant explorations, slowly visual poems emerged, processing meditative contemplations on meaningful questions into recognizable smudges that elude literal translations. Perfect!

Stevens "ideas of order" and his belief that imagination can discover "the opposite of chaos in chaos" I found a core affinity and the inspiration for this suite...

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens

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.

Stevens, Wallace. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Modern & Contemporary Poems. The Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing @ The University of Pennsylvania. 6 Aug. 2004. 19 Sept. 2005 <http://www.writing.upenn.edu/ ~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html>.