Winter Shadow explores three of the thirteen poems from Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. In writing the work, I imagined a person waking from a long sleep to an unrecognizable world. I imagined this person slowly remembering bits and pieces of an event which has caused the world to exist only in winter’s shadow. The person eventually realizes they are alone, save for a solitary blackbird which mysteriously watches over them. The poems are set intentionally out of order to bring out this narrative.

Winter Shadow was written for and performed by loadbang during their residency at CCM.

Text excerpted from Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

(XIII)
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
(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.
(IX)
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles