Anecdote of the Jar
Wallace Stevens, 1919
Wallace Stevens's short poem about a jar placed on a hill in Tennessee and the way the wilderness arranges itself around it.
I placed a jar in Tennessee,And round it was, upon a hill.It made the slovenly wildernessSurround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,And sprawled around, no longer wild.The jar was round upon the groundAnd tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.The jar was gray and bare.It did not give of bird or bush,Like nothing else in Tennessee.