371:…I think it worth noting that Stevens as he wrote the poem must have had in mind a specific fruit jar, the 'Dominion Wide Mouth Special.'… Although manufactured in Canada, the jar has been widely distributed in the United States from 1913 to the present, the exemplar photographed dates ca. 1918; Stevens was in fact traveling in Tennessee in April and May 1918. … As a 'wide mouth special,' the jar is particularly notable, of its kind, as 'tall and of a port in air.' And its glass, compared to that of other fruit jars, is especially 'gray and bare.' Whether in Tennessee in 1918 fruit jars were used as containers for 'moonshine,' I have not been able to establish definitively. Surely, granting Stevens' penchant for 'moon' and 'shine,' the matter is worth investigating.
81:"Anecdote of the Jar" can be taken literally but is best served figuratively. Others see in it political issues. From a feminist viewpoint, the jar represents the male ego placed firmly in a female environment, Mother Nature, causing mayhem and possible destruction. Some think the jar is a symbol of industrial imperialism, taking over the environment and manipulating the wilderness.
117:". The poem alludes to Keats, she argues, as a way of discussing the predicament of the American artist "who cannot feel confidently the possessor, as Keats felt, of the Western cultural tradition." Vendler asks, shall the poet use language imported from Europe ("of a port in air", to "give of"), or as
176:'s discovery of the Dominion canning jars (a picture of which is then passed around)," a reference to that late, celebrated Wallace Stevens scholar and historiographer of literature's published association of the poem with a specific item of physical
186:, writing in 2023, presents the poem in the context of Stevens' work as a surety bond claimsman tied to the industrial clearcutting of the last remnant of the great Appalachian forest in East Tennessee in 1918.
69:. Wallace Stevens is an important figure in 20th century American poetry. The poem was first published in 1919, it is in the public domain. Wallace Stevens wrote the poem in 1918 when he was in the town of
842:
423:
O'Donnell, Kevin E. (2023). "Wallace
Stevens's 'Anecdote of the Jar': Modernist Poetics and the Industrial Logging of the Great Appalachian Forest". In Cory, Jessica; Wright, Laura (eds.).
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Brogan, Jacqueline Vaught (1994). "Introducing
Stevens: Or, the Sheerly Playful and the Display of Theory". In Serio, J.; Leggett, B. (eds.).
317:
499:
458:
109:, in a reading from 1984 that contradicts Buttel, asserts that the poem is incomprehensible except as understood as a commentary on
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puts it, "plain
American that cats and dogs can read", like "The jar was round upon the ground"? She argues that the poem is a
133:" and vowing "to stop imitating Keats and seek a native American language that will not take the wild out of the wilderness."
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96:, and though his success is qualified, art and imagination do at least impose an idea of order on the sprawling reality.
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as a poem concerned with temporal and linguistic disjunction, especially in the convoluted syntax of the last two lines;
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This much-anthologized poem succinctly accommodates a remarkable number of different and plausible interpretations, as
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perspective that reveals a poem concerned with male dominance over a traditionally feminized landscape;
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or from the perspective of a cultural critic that might find a sense of industrial imperialism.
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suggested in 1967 that the speaker would arrange the wild landscape into the order of a
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Pearce, Roy Harvey (Summer 1977). "'Anecdote of the Jar': An
Iconological Note".
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According to Brogan, however (writing in 1994), the poem can be approached:
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Brogan concludes, "When the debate gets particularly intense, I introduce
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Frogs Eat
Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs
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321:. Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
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Cy Est
Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges
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observes in a discussion of how she teaches it to her students.
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105:, Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor Emerita at
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Collected Poems and Prose, The
Library of America, 1997
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as a poem about writing poetry and making art generally;
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359:. This web source quotes from and cites the following:
850:Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow
360:
425:Appalachian Ecocriticism and the Paradox of Place
310:
1038:
466:
427:. University of Georgia Press. pp. 241–251.
311:Davidson, Michael (2012). Bernstein, Ch. (ed.).
259:
257:
738:The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician
404:
395:
452:
342:"Roy Harvey Pearce: On "Anecdote of the Jar""
254:
340:MAP Staff & Pearce, Roy Harvey (1977).
459:
445:
36: And sprawled around, no longer wild.
500:The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage
313:"Roy Harvey Pearce (1919–2012): Obituary"
398:Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium
232:
941:Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
38: The jar was round upon the ground
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49: Like nothing else in Tennessee.
47: It did not give of bird or bush,
990:The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade
871:The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws
440:
29: It made the slovenly wilderness
40: And tall and of a port in air.
27: And round it was, upon a hill.
34: The wilderness rose up to it,
13:
710:Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks
689:On the Manner of Addressing Clouds
235:"Faust named University Professor"
202:Buttel, p. 166. See also Librivox
43: It took dominion everywhere.
25: I placed a jar in Tennessee,
14:
1073:
906:Two Figures in Dense Violet Night
76:
717:A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
418:. University of Tennessee Press.
409:. University of Tennessee Press.
45: The jar was gray and bare.
976:The Surprises of the Superhuman
927:Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion
696:Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb
661:Anecdote of Men by the Thousand
584:Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores
376:
333:
780:Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock
675:Floral Decorations for Bananas
556:Nuances of a Theme by Williams
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233:HG Staff (December 17, 2018).
226:
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196:
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955:The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad
794:The Virgin Carrying a Lantern
605:Homunculus et la Belle Etoile
400:. Princeton University Press.
389:
149:poststructuralist perspective
668:The Apostrophe to Vincentine
619:From the Misery of Don Joost
612:The Comedian as the Letter C
347:Modern American Poetry (MAP)
7:
934:Peter Quince at the Clavier
920:To the One of Fictive Music
892:Colloquy with a Polish Aunt
724:The Place of the Solitaires
363:The Wallace Stevens Journal
10:
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983:Sea Surface Full of Clouds
815:Six Significant Landscapes
640:The Worms at Heaven's Gate
507:The Plot Against the Giant
407:Words Chosen Out of Desire
125:, retracting the Keatsian
1047:Poetry by Wallace Stevens
480:
63:'s first book of poetry,
31: Surround that hill.
773:Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
759:The Emperor of Ice-Cream
752:Depression Before Spring
703:Of the Surface of Things
633:Last Looks at the Lilacs
626:O Florida, Venereal Soil
563:Metaphors of a Magnifico
416:Teaching Wallace Stevens
212:and the Poetry web site.
189:
142:New Critical perspective
549:Le Monocle de Mon Oncle
493:Invective Against Swans
405:Vendler, Helen (1984).
396:Buttel, Robert (1967).
71:Elizabethton, Tennessee
16:Poem by Wallace Stevens
962:The Death of a Soldier
857:Cortège for Rosenbloom
542:The Load Of Sugar-Cane
52:
22:
836:Palace of the Babies
822:Bantam in Pine-Woods
115:Ode on a Grecian Urn
1004:Anatomy of Monotony
829:Anecdote of the Jar
801:Stars at Tallapoosa
731:The Weeping Burgher
570:Ploughing on Sunday
521:Domination of Black
240:The Harvard Gazette
57:Anecdote of the Jar
20:Anecdote of the Jar
591:Fabliau of Florida
535:The Ordinary Women
208:2010-10-13 at the
107:Harvard University
1034:
1033:
1011:The Public Square
682:Anecdote of Canna
382:O'Donnell, p. 250
167:Roy Harvey Pearce
86:Jacqueline Brogan
59:" is a poem from
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997:Lunar Paraphrase
766:The Cuban Doctor
598:Doctor of Geneva
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808:Explanation
318:jacket2.org
170: [
1057:1919 poems
1041:Categories
390:References
94:still life
469:Harmonium
369:(2): 65.
178:Americana
66:Harmonium
969:Negation
899:Gubbinal
206:Archived
156:feminist
127:conceits
123:palinode
154:from a
147:from a
140:from a
111:Keats's
913:Theory
864:Tattoo
325:May 1,
353:1 May
246:1 May
190:Notes
174:]
355:2023
327:2023
248:2023
129:of "
1025:Tea
472:by
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256:^
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