jar on a hill...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Wallace Stevens

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And 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.

*

This poem by Wallace Stevens is in one of my deepest wells. I really can’t remember a time when I didn’t know this poem. I know the work came to me through my father who has always referred to it – my father whose ideal poet is Longfellow, yet is a man who knows Stevens’ poem. From that connection, I grew to love this poem – and that pulled me deeper, when I was ready, into Stevens’ great works: “The Idea of Order at Key West,” “The Snow Man,” “Peter Quince at the Clavier,” “Sunday Morning” … I’ll stop there.

What amazes me most about “Anecdote of the Jar” is Stevens’ ability to give force to such a small and insignificant object. The poet emphasizes circular imagery throughout – jar, round, hill surround, around – to add a universal or even archetypal quality to the poem. Stevens writes, “The wilderness rose up to it, / And sprawled around, no longer wild” – and the jar becomes transformed. This is a surprise, given the almost trivial nature of the opening line: “I placed a jar in Tennessee”. It was round. It was on a hill. Add to this the fact that the jar is plain and translucent. – Yet, the world, the wilderness, rises to meet it. This wilderness, however, instead of existing as a romantic landscape of untamed beauty, is described as “slovenly” and “no longer wild”. Its beauty, whatever that is, is either overwhelmed by or infused with – and I lean more toward the latter – the jar’s plain but real presence.

Loneliness of the creative act is realized in the stark imagery of the closing lines:

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush

The poem ends with the unique attributive force of the jar: “Like nothing else in Tennessee”. The jar’s purpose – as supply, protection, display – is unlimited. Stevens, in his description of the jar, wants many possible readings of “port” – gateway, demeanor, harbor, meaning, refuge – to instill the poem with more ambiguity. The speaker gives the jar to the wilderness – such a strange act, since the jar is alien to nature in its existence as a result of human mass production.

The complex nature of the poem becomes evident when considering the dominion that is declared. What’s important to note is that the jar, and not the “I” of the poem, asserts dominion. A hill serves as pedestal for this dull and undecorated human product – no doubt, Stevens had in mind some sort of kinship with modern art and New York’s famous Armory Show of 1913 when he wrote this poem during or shortly after his 1918 trip to Tennessee. It’s the act of placing the ubiquitous jar in such an unlikely place that is of value in this poem, and in the doing, reveals something about the giver.

A jar that haunts.