The author took the rather incomprehensible poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird as starting point for this collection. All stories have 13 parts, like the poem but in the first each part of the poem is taken as a motto for each chapter. It really escapes me why. The connection between poem and story seems stretched and not all that clear. The story is perfect as it is without the poem. And there is more poetry in the magnificent and moving Sht'kol story than in the entire Wallace Stevens poem!