Three Muses. Bye Bye Blackbird.

This is my entry for the Three Muses Challenge this week: Bye, bye blackbird.  So, no matter how hard I tried to get these blackbirds to come out black, they came out white. Think of it as a photographic negative... albino blackbirds.  Just can't argue with the muse.  Did you know there really are albino blackbirds?  There are lots of interesting pictures and discussions on UK birding sites, for example, here.  Anyway, the major inspiration for the piece was the gorgeous Beatles song, which is now running like a tape in my head, over and over... here's a link to Paul McCartney performing it.

For this ATC, I've used vintage sheet music, gesso'd, stamped, birds perched on the music as if it is a branch, vintage mother of pearl sequins, stamped with letter stamps.

To get ideas for this theme, my family did some brainstorming and my daughter Emma did some research at www.poets.org. She found this beautiful piece by Wallace Stevens.  I thought I would share it with you - there is so much contained within it to appreciate and work with.  Parts of this poem also made their way into my ATC. In the US, April is National Poetry Month!

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.