Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I like the poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens, a lot.  I found it interesting that it was thirteen, rather than a landmark number. such as ten.  Stevens probably wanted a special number.  Also, there is twenty mountains, instead of 13 or a different number.

    The seasons in this were interesting and made me think of the haikus.  It starts off at winter, then moves to autumn, back to winter, then spring, and finally back to winter again.  It's almost a year.

     There was lots of assonance in this poem. In the first stanza, there was some when it said "twenty snowy," and "among mountains."  Finally, in the third, it said "blackbird whirled."

I noticed some internal rhyming too, in the second stanza, where it said "I was of three minds,” page break “ Like a tree,” another page break “In which there are three blackbirds."  Three, tree, and three again rhymed.  There was also some regular rhyming too, with different stanzas.  For example, in one stanza it ended with minds, and in another it ended with pantomime, and those are approximate rhymes.

Another interesting thing I noticed in this poem was that the “countdown” was in roman numerals.  Maybe because regular ones were too boring?  Also, why does it count up from one? I guess you see it both ways, but for some reason I was expecting it to start at thirteen and go down.