ANECDOTE OF THE JAR

Wallace Stevens

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.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955); is an American poet, whose works deal mainly with the individual's interaction with the outside world. Stevens used sensuous, elaborate imagery and elevated, precise word choice to express subtle philosophical themes. He frequently contrasted the bleakness and monotony of modern industrialized life which the richness of nature. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Stevens was educated at Harvard University. He then worked a journalist in New York City before attending New York law school. Stevens was admitted to the bar in 1904 and in 1909 married Elsie Moll, who was also from Reading. In 1916 Stevens join the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, an insurance firm in Hartford, Connecticut, and he became a vice president at the firm in 1934. He worked there, despite his increasing success as a poet, until his death.

Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens has been puzzling reader for nearly a century. On the surface, it's a short, lyrical imagist (creating one strong image) poem, consisting of three 4-line stanzas, or quatrains. So, its structure is simple and familiar to the readers.

Stevens also uses a light word, Anecdote, in the title, suggesting to readers that this is just an incidental report of a minor event. The speaker in the poem, presumably the author, appears only in the first line as I, and then detaches himself as merely an observer. All of these elements of familiarity, simplicity, and detachment serve to free the reader to concentrate his or her energy on contemplating the deeper meaning, or content, of the poem.

Through this poem the writer tries to explore the question of the superiority between art and nature: Is nature superior to human creations, or does human creativity surpasses nature in some way? This is an age-old and puzzling question. This poem solves the riddle by recognizing the unique differences between art and nature: art may sometimes be more beautiful than nature but it cannot be as creative as the nature.

The poem is written mostly in iambic tetrameter. That is, lines of four beats with each beat consisting of an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable. While Anecdote of the Jar doesn't rhyme in the traditional sense, Stevens does play with the sounds of the words in the poem. Many of the words are smooth and soft sounding, such as round, surround, and ground, while others have a breezy quality, like air, everywhere, and bare. He also uses repetition of 'il' in the middle of words, such as hill, wilderness, and wild. All of these soft, smooth, breezy sounds create a stark (very plain) contrast when he occasionally uses words with harsher sounds, such as jar, tall, and port. In the final stanza, Stevens uses the only instance of alliteration (bare, bird, and bush), which creates a contrast with the rest of the poem and urges the reader to contemplate those lines.

Stevens also plays with syllables in his poem. While most of the words are short, simple, and monosyllabic, he occasionally throws in a longer word, such as dominion or wilderness. All of these various uses of sound let the reader know that the choice to use these specific words was very deliberate and not merely by chance.

The poem begins by telling us of an incident in the past. Once he kept a big and beautiful jar upon an untidy hill in Tennessee. It was a beautiful round jar, reminding one of the Grecian urns of Keats. We are asked to imagine a kind of enormous hand placing a round jar on a hill. The jar is an art object made by a human being, whereas the hill on which it is placed is natural. This contrast becomes more striking as the poem develops. The persona of the poem tells us that the man made jar caused the wilderness to surround the hill, or that the hill looked more untidy in contrast to the jar. In the second quatrain, the "slovenly" and wild nature rises up to the artistic jar, which we now understand as a symbol of the human imagination. But rather than overtake the jar, as we might expect natural brush would in reality, the jar/imagination tames or controls the wilderness. Perhaps Stevens is arguing briefly here that the imagination, culture and art might be more powerful than any natural reality. But the poem abruptly takes a turn in its form, and another turn in content follows. The jar domineers "everywhere". This is a striking expression of the power of the imagination over reality. But we are soon to see the other side of the reality. In the third stanza, the poem takes the other turn, in its content. Here, the persona shifts from the lofty images that described the majestic jar (or imagination) to a different description using words like "gray" and "bare object", which cannot give birth and re-create the fertile lushness like that of the "slovenly wilderness" described in the first stanza. It is beautiful, but ultimately does not have the power of creation of the nature/ reality represented by the wilderness. The poet is demonstrating the acceptance of the limits of imagination in reality. Steven's central concern in his poetry is the treatment of the "problem" of reality versus imagination. "Anecdote of the Jar" is an example that expresses an acceptance of the limits of the imagination; this is also Stevens theory of poetry. The jar, as a symbol of the imagination, is not fertile, and it cannot recycle itself or reproduce, though it may, in imagination, be richer than the nature. Both have their uniqueness, and yet we feel that the poet is more or less on the side of the nature's diverse, creative and limitless powers of creation. The confident persona, who seems to have egoistically placed a jar to challenge the nature, realizes at last that his art is not capable of what the nature is.

EXTENSIVE READING:

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

“I” does not refer to just Wallace Stevens but all of humanity. The jar they are placing is showing humans taking over nature. A jar is man-made is symbolizing every man made thing that humans have placed in nature. They may specify that it was round because a circle is not seen in nature nor are perfectly round things. The roundness of the jar is distinguishing it from everything else in nature.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

Slovenly means untidy or unorganized. Without human interference, nature is indeed untidy because it grows various plants and animals make habitats and ‘messes’. And nothing really changes this or ‘cleans it up’. Stevens uses personification when he describes that the untidy wilderness that has not yet been affected by mankind surrounds the hill. The hill also symbolizes mankind since the jar is placed upon it.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

Sprawl is to spread out in a straggling or disorderly fashion. Therefore, the poet used binary opposition when he describes the wilderness sprawling around the jar but no longer being wild. Wild gives the reader the idea of being disorderly, unkempt.

The fact the wilderness is no longer wild when it approaches the jar could mean that the wilderness is also being industrialized and taken over by mankind.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

Industrialization does not stop. Once it starts, man begins industrializing everything it can to create a more technological world. Therefore, it is taking over and dominating everything in its past. This made me think of how companies and people are constantly knocking down trees, and rainforests, and clearing out grass so that they can build malls, corporations, or businesses. Most people now care about money instead of nature.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Bird and bush are both things that occur and live naturally in nature. They would be here on this earth with or without human interaction and industrialization. Therefore, once the jar, or the changes created my mankind takeover, it doesn’t create a bird or a bush or something natural. These changes created by mankind are like nothing else seen in Tennessee because Tennessee has not yet been touched by industrialization. It is still completely natural and un-changed territory. The poem has a lot of meaning and even more that can be uncovered.