As we know, symbol represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible. As for symbolism, it is the practice of representing things by means of symbols or of attributing symbolic meanings or significance to objects, events, or relationships. Writers, who belong to this movement, use the power of words to express feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. Poets focus on the inner life. They use words, which express private associations and baffling images. Metonymy and metaphor are used as symbols, which create in our imagination multiple levels of signification. Denied influence in the everyday world, poets show their great interest in private thoughts, associations (past associations, non-visual associations and so on).
The creative activity of E. Poe, a great American poet, short-story writer, editor and literary critic, had an influence on the appearance of Symbolist Movement. He is well-known for his tales of mystery and the macabre. His short stories and poems are full of mysticism and obscurity, which are based very often on metaphors and on the great power of imagination. It is small wander that he had an influence on W. Stevens (of course, there we can speak only about indirect influence). Both Poe and Stevens perceive imagination as the ultimate faculty of the human mind. And Poe's "The Raven" can be easily compared with Stevens’ "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird".
For W. Stevens poetry imagination is very important: the imagination and reality are two parts of a whole; one without the other cannot be sufficient enough to move a reader. Stevens believed in an interface between reality and the imagination. He writes and speaks a great deal about their interrelation. By reality, he means what philosophers used to call the ‘common-sense’ realm of reality, where a stone is ‘really there’, is cold, hard, gray and is really heavy to lift, etc. Stevens is particularly interested in the interrelation between ‘reality’ and ‘imagination’, and perhaps recognized that both spring from the same source. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is a poem which consists of thirteen short, separate poems, all of which mention blackbirds in some way. Affinity of this poem to imagism, cubism, symbolism is evident. The blackbird in this poem can be a ‘real’ blackbird in space and time, and can also be the imaginative blackbird and then it’s used to single abstract meaning and make allegory of entire poem. So it’s up to the reader to decide who this blackbird is. For example, Riddle interpret blackbird as figure for and harbinger of death. It should be mentioned that numbers play an important role in the imagination of Wallace Stevens. In this poem we can see the mathematical precision: twenty snowy mountains, one eye of the blackbird, thirteen ways of looking at blackbird, three birds. The numbers in the poem may be chosen by chance or they may be the numbers of runic significance, of ill-omen. Stevens uses thirteen stanzas, so the reader can see that there are variations in register, in ways of telling as well as in ways of looking. Stevens shows that people cannot control their life, it’s nature that does it. That’s why we very often feel that something unknown, mysterious is around us. The poet describes evening: “it was evening all day” – the time of contemplation, the time of poetry. “It was snowing, and it was about to snow” – the deep peace that accompanies the writing of certain kinds of poetry. The snow creates a special mood. “The blackbird sat in the cedar limbs.” The blackbird, like all ancient and primitive bird oracles, sits in the tree, preparing to speak. The poet listens. Stevens tries to persuade us that we should always listen to the voice of nature, because nature is our mother, she is “a wise woman”. He persuades us that everything depends on nature, and people are her children. We cannot find the absolute truth, we cannot know everything, these thoughts poet encipher in the words “know”, “noble”, “I know”.
Sight is the dominant perceptual modality. The poems are almost cinematic.
He does this by making each stanza an explanation of a new way of his perception of this blackbird. First, he writes about his physical perception of the blackbird as an observer. Then, he writes about his mental perception. These are as the thoughts and perceptions of the blackbird itself, and thus the author’s. At
the end, he writes that he now knows the blackbird becomes a part of him.
Some scholars think that there is no deep sense in this poem, others believe in a kind of mystery, convincing that the poet tries to show the unity of blackbird (a symbol of nature) and human beings (people).
Ronald Sukenick says of this poem: “<…> the poem can be considered a series of instances of how the imagination works<…> One finds in this poem that there are degrees in kind of imaginative statement, from those which are figurative, but whose meaning may be specified, to those whose meaning is ultimately ambiguous, but which for that reason are highly suggestive.”
Stevens’ poetry is not totally traditional. He follows traditions, but creates new approaches to traditional symbols, Stevens was creating something exotic: a “poesie pure”, poetry indeed where rhythms, vowels and consonants substituted for musical notes, because poetry must be based on life, it must touch and vitalize emotion.
Stevens admires the human ability to imagine, to live in two realities. His use of words and images that seek to blend the imagined and the concrete makes him a great modern poet.

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4. Marshall W. The Literature of the United States of America, New York, 1988 – 314p.
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8. http://everything2.com
9. http://www.writing.upenn.edu