I hope it's understood that any email that you may send to myself is liable to be re-printed as an entry. Case in point, Johnny was kind enough to send this message:

"In the recent issue review of Saturday Night, you asked about the phrase "____ Ways Of Looking At _______" and questioned its Canadian's origins.

Unfortunately, the phrase is not Canadian, but another journalistic hack trick... the one where they take a supposedly literary reference, replace certain words with words relevant to your article and voila, instant title. I suppose this is to give an article some sort of timeless quality or whatever, but it really just ends up making the journalist look lazy and uninspired.

This particular reference is to "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by the (not Canadian) poet Wallace Stevens, though he's not alone in being playfully ripped off by hacks. Other examples would be the hoary old "Fear And Loathing In ___________" (a title so good Thompson ripped himself off a few years later for "...On The Campaign Trail") and "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About ________ But Were Afraid To Ask."

***
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.