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 every where. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush Like nothing else in Tennessee.

— Wallace Stevens, “Anecdote of the Jar”

• Wallace Stevens