Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

I.
Among twenty complicated poems,
The only one I thought I understood
Was the one about the blackbird.

II.
I figured, there are at least three ways to read it--
Like a tree
In which sits perspectivism, transcendentalism, and biocentrism.

III.
The poem whirled into my head.
It nestled itself up against Emerson and James.

IV.
A poet and a poem
Are one.
A poet and a poem and a reader
Are not.

V.
I don't know whether to prefer
The straightforwardness of philosophy,
Or the convolution of poetry,
Comprehending a text,
Or just pretending to.

VI.
Notes fill the margins
With scribbled intensity.
The shadow of the poem
Overbears.
The mood, traced in the margins,
Grows increasingly frustrated.

VII.
O Wallace Stevens,
Why do you use such obscure images?
Do you not see how philosophy
Gets straight to the heart of things?

VIII.
I know italicized French,
And a few of your Latin words;
But I know, too,
That a dictionary is involved
In what I know.

IX.
When the poem fell out of my head,
It moved into the fringe
Of James' coordinate plane.

X.
At the sight of the poem again,
Sitting unchanged on the page,
Even the most confident students
Will cry out sharply.

XI.
She walked to the computer center
With an anthology in her hand.
Once, a fear pierced her,
In that she mistook
Its blank figures
For metaphors.

XII.
This stanza is short!
It must be easier to read? Alas...

XIII.
All night, I read.
I struggled,
And I was going to struggle.
Wallace Stevens lay
Comfortably in his grave.