Anecdote of the Jar
POEM VIEWS: 1712
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) is one of most significant American poets of the 20th century. The consummate . . . MORE »
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) is one of most significant American poets of the 20th century. The consummate . . . MORE »
By 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, “Anecdote of a Jar” from Collected Poems. Copyright 1923, 1951, 1954 by Wallace Stevens. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.