Some poems have titles that are vague and make you wonder what to expect from the poem itself (“Metaphors,” for example). Not this one—the title of Stevens’ poem tells us exactly what to expect: namely, thirteen ways (in the form of thirteen short stanzas) of looking at a blackbird.
Though blackbirds are pretty and all, it’s not really the bird itself that’s so important, but the various impressions that we can take from the act of looking. Because of this, the poem gives us a useful example of semiotic concepts such as denotation/connotation and the different signifieds that can be associated with a single signifier.
Can you think of thirteen ways in which we might look at something other than a blackbird? How could doing so help us explore the different connotations that a signifier might have?