The Poe Underground Highlights

Warwick poet and musician D.K. Mckenzie presents excerpts from his spoken word and music podcast, The Poe Underground, in a Warwick Radio exclusive.

In this episode, hear jazz-inspired, original music and the poems Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens, Songs from the Dusk by Russell W. Davenport, and Infinity by D.K. Mckenzie.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

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.

Songs from the Dusk (Movement for an Imaginary Violin)

Take me there, take me there—far, far within

The scarlet cloisters of the clouds, hung over

This glassy water-terrace rimmed with clover,

O my imaginary violin!

It cannot hush, it cannot hush—as thin,

As wild, as sweet as miracle! Mad lover,

My heart must almost perish to discover

What ecstasy of wine we are—what kin.

Yet you grow slow aloft, and falter—fall.

I scarcely hear, I scarcely hear at all

Those drops of tone. Warblers and swallows call

Across the water, drawing shore to shore;

The woodpecker; the dusk. Oh, play one more—

One more—one more—one more note! That is all.

Infinity

Death pulls me one way

You tug me the other

Your giant eyes dance

Bust forth with black hole gravity

Atomic fusion is your smile with a voice of combustion

There you go with the laughter of a thousand earthquakes

Rattling the ground beneath your feet

Never exhausting your gate of storms and fire

Your kiss however is the thing

The most powerful thing that topples the world

And keeps the oceans from flowing

The poison of time is postponed and so is death

The universe is on hold when we're together

We are immortal dancing, spinning,