the "North's" connections

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.
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. Wallace Stevens

-In class the other day we were talking about 'North' or at least the idea of north, and it was brought up that Wallace Stevens writes about the Aurora's, a very distinct aspect of the north in Pullman's His Dark Materials.
I think it is interesting to think of the north as an idea, an imaginary place full of mystery and danger. It seems as if Pullman, almost through realism, relates a notion of a story, whoever fantastical it might be, to the common reader. I believe in his idea of the north because he takes things already present in the matter and turns certain mysteries or wonderings we might have about a place and turns them into reality.
I can see this realism in Wallace Stevens poems yet in a slightly different way. He to uses the raven (black bird)as a character in his writing, just as Pullman does. Also he seems to incorporate or at least have been captivated by the north to include it in some aspects of his poetry. In stanza X Stevens wrote, "At the sight of blackbirds/
Flying in a green light/ Even the bawds of euphony/ Would cry out sharply." Here it seems to me that Stevens is referring to the blackbirds flying with the Aurora for their background. The idea of the north seems to capture more than just Pullman and Stevens since so many people have been attracted to Pullman's writings. Also it is interesting to take an idea and see it pop up in all sorts of interesting places.