Previous Next

There are very few rhymes in Stevens’s poem, and the rhymes that do appear tend to be ambiguous in one of two ways. The first type of ambiguity relates to a technique known as slant rhyme, which refers to partial rhymes that don’t perfectly match. One significant example of slant rhyme appears in lines 40–41:

         Even the bawds of euphony
         Would cry out sharply.

This slant rhyme has a humorous effect, since its imperfection creates a dissonance that stands in tension with the word euphony, which means harmonious and pleasing to the ear. The second way rhymes are ambiguous in the poem has to do with their distance from one another. As an example, consider the second and third stanzas (lines 4–8):

         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.

The words “minds” (line 4) and “pantomime” (line 8) technically form a slant rhyme, but they are so far away from each other that the rhyme is difficult to perceive. The ambiguity of these rhymes mirrors the poem’s thematic concerns about perception. Just as the poem explores different ways of perceiving—and misperceiving—blackbirds, we readers have to ask ourselves whether or not we are perceiving—or misperceiving—these ambiguous rhymes.

Previous section Meter Next section Key Poetic Devices

Take a Study Break