Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens: poem analysis & meaning

Anecdote of the Jar the full poem, lines numbered

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

5The 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.

10The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

The poem in 60 seconds

A person puts a jar on a hill, and suddenly the wilderness has a center. In twelve lines, Stevens asks what happens when one made thing enters a world that nobody made. Watch the last three lines, where the jar’s power starts to look like emptiness.

The speaker says, simply, that they placed a jar in Tennessee. The jar was round and stood on a hill, and its presence made the untidy, “slovenly” wilderness surround that hill, as if the land now had to arrange itself around the jar. In the second stanza the wilderness rises up toward the jar and sprawls around it, “no longer wild.” The jar is round, it sits upon the ground, and it is tall, with a dignified bearing in the air. In the third stanza the jar takes “dominion everywhere,” ruling the whole scene. Then the speaker describes it in flatter words. The jar is gray and bare. It does not give of bird or bush, meaning it produces nothing living, unlike the wilderness around it. The last line says it was like nothing else in Tennessee. That can mean the jar was unique, or that it had nothing in common with the living land. The speaker never says why the jar was placed there or what it is for.

Speaker & situation

SpeakerAn unnamed “I” who performed one small act, placing a jar on a hill, and reports what followed. The speaker describes the effects in detail but never gives a reason.

Addressed toNo listener is named. The title calls the poem an anecdote, a short account of one incident, so it reads like a story told to anyone.

OccasionA single, slight event. The title promises something small and casual, and the poem then treats that small act as if it changed a whole landscape.

SettingA hill in the Tennessee wilderness. The poem gives no season, no time and no other people.

ToneCool, exact and hard to pin down. The speaker describes the jar’s power with some grandeur (“took dominion everywhere”) and then lists what it lacks in plain words, so readers disagree about whether the tone admires the jar or judges it.

Form & sound

FormLyric poem; twelve lines in three four-line stanzas, told as a tiny story.

MeterMostly iambic tetrameter: eight syllables and four beats, as in line 1. Line 4 (“Surround that hill”) and line 10 (“The jar was gray and bare”) are shorter, so both stand out.

Rhyme schemeNo regular scheme. Rhyme turns up unevenly: “round” and “ground” inside line 7, and “air,” “everywhere” and “bare” at the ends of lines 8 to 10. Repetition does the binding instead: “hill” ends lines 2 and 4, and “Tennessee” ends both the first and the last line.

SoundThe sound of “round” circles through the poem: “round” (line 2), “Surround” (line 4), “around” (line 6) and “round upon the ground” (line 7). The repeated sound echoes the jar’s shape and the way the land gathers around it.

StructureEach stanza does one job. Stanza 1 places the jar, stanza 2 shows the wilderness responding, and stanza 3 states the jar’s rule and then its emptiness.

Line by line what each part says and does

1

Lines 1–4

The jar on the hill

The speaker places a round jar on a hill in Tennessee. At once the “slovenly wilderness” surrounds the hill.

How it worksOne small act changes how the whole scene is arranged. Calling the wilderness “slovenly” (messy, careless) already judges nature by the standard of human neatness.
2

Lines 5–8

The wilderness answers

The wilderness rises up to the jar and sprawls around it, “no longer wild.” The jar sits round upon the ground, tall and “of a port in air.”

How it worksThe land seems to lose its wildness simply by having a center. “Port” here means bearing or carriage, the way a dignified person holds themselves, so the jar begins to look like a ruler.
3

Lines 9–12

Dominion and emptiness

The jar takes dominion everywhere. It is gray and bare, it gives nothing of bird or bush, and it is like nothing else in Tennessee.

How it worksLine 9 is the height of the jar’s power, and line 10 cuts it down with a short, plain description. The final line can be read as praise or as a verdict of lifelessness, and the poem does not choose.

The turn

Lines 10

Line 9 gives the jar total rule: it “took dominion everywhere.” Line 10 turns to what the jar is actually like, “gray and bare,” and lines 11 and 12 add that it gives nothing living. The poem moves from the jar’s power to its emptiness, which is why readers still argue over whether it praises the jar or criticizes it.

Literary devices with line numbers

Personification

The wilderness is “slovenly” in line 3, like a careless person, and in lines 5 and 6 it “rose up” to the jar and “sprawled around” it. The jar, in turn, “took dominion” in line 9, like a monarch. The land and the jar behave like a crowd and its king.

Repetition of sound

“Round” returns in line 2, inside “Surround” in line 4, inside “around” in line 6, and twice in line 7 (“round upon the ground”). The sound circles the poem the way the landscape circles the jar.

Diction of power

In line 8 the jar is “of a port in air,” an old phrase for a stately bearing, and in line 9 it takes “dominion.” Many readers hear an echo of Genesis, where God gives human beings dominion over the living creatures of the earth. The grand words sit oddly on an ordinary jar.

Contrast

The poem sets the round, neat jar against the “slovenly wilderness” (line 3), and then sets the jar’s “gray and bare” surface (line 10) against the “bird or bush” it cannot give (line 11). Order wins the first contrast; life wins the second.

Ambiguity

Line 12, “Like nothing else in Tennessee,” can mean the jar is one of a kind, which sounds like praise. It can also mean the jar resembles nothing alive in the landscape, which sounds like a charge. Because line 11 comes just before it, both meanings stay open.

Themes in Anecdote of the Jar

Human order and wild natureThe cost of controlArt and the imaginationOwnership of the land

Human order and wild nature

One made object changes the wilderness from something sprawling and “slovenly” into something arranged around a center (lines 3 to 6). The poem shows how much power a single human act of order can have over the way a place is seen.

The cost of control

The jar rules everywhere, yet it is “gray and bare” and gives nothing of bird or bush (lines 10 and 11). Many readers see the poem as a warning that imposed order can be sterile, that what dominates a landscape may add nothing living to it.

Art and the imagination

Many readers take the jar as a figure for art, or for the mind’s habit of organizing what it sees. A painting or a poem, like the jar, gives a scattered world a center. The poem admires that power and also shows its limits.

Ownership of the land

Some readers connect the poem with the way people have claimed and reshaped American wilderness. The speaker simply “placed” the jar, and the land had to adjust. The poem never states this reading, but the language of “dominion” invites it.

Images and symbols

The jar

A plain, round, human-made vessel. Readers take it as art, the imagination, human order or human control of nature. The poem gives it great power and no life.

The wilderness

Nature before anyone arranges it: untidy, sprawling and alive with bird and bush. Once the jar arrives, it is “no longer wild” (line 6).

Tensions

Order vs. wildness. The jar brings shape and a center to the land, and the land loses its wildness in return. The poem shows what is gained, a clear arrangement, and what is lost, the living variety the jar cannot give.

The ending

How Anecdote of the Jar ends, explained

The final stanza raises the jar to its greatest height and then lowers it. Line 9 says it “took dominion everywhere,” a phrase fit for a king. Line 10 answers with a short, flat sentence: “The jar was gray and bare.” Line 11 adds that it did not give of bird or bush. The wilderness around it breeds birds and grows bushes, and the jar breeds and grows nothing. Then comes the last line, “Like nothing else in Tennessee,” which returns to the place named in line 1 and closes the circle. Its meaning splits. Read one way, the jar is unique, the one thing in the landscape that is not part of it, and that uniqueness is its power. Read another way, the jar is unlike everything living around it, and that is its failure. Readers who see the jar as art tend to find the poem admiring, with a note of doubt. Readers who see it as human control of nature tend to find it critical. The speaker, who placed the jar, never explains why or passes judgment. Because the poem is called an anecdote, it stays a story of what happened, and the reader has to decide what the jar was worth.

“I placed a jar in Tennessee,”

Line 1. The whole event in six words. The flat, casual opening, with no reason given, is part of what makes the poem so open to interpretation.

“It made the slovenly wilderness / Surround that hill.”

Lines 3–4. The jar’s first effect: the land now arranges itself around it. “Slovenly” judges nature as messy, the way a tidy person judges an untidy room.

“It took dominion everywhere. / The jar was gray and bare.”

Lines 9–10. The poem’s turn in two lines: total power, then a short, plain sentence that makes the ruler look empty.

“It did not give of bird or bush, / Like nothing else in Tennessee.”

Lines 11–12. The jar produces nothing living. The last line can mean it is unique or that it is unlike anything alive, and the poem leaves both open.

Common misreadings

MythThe poem simply celebrates art’s triumph over nature.

ActuallyLines 7 to 9 give the jar grandeur, but lines 10 and 11 call it “gray and bare” and say it gives nothing living. The poem holds both views, and a reading that ignores either half misses the point.

MythThe jar is a beautiful, decorated work of art, like Keats’s Grecian urn.

ActuallyThe poem describes no decoration and no beauty. The jar is round, tall, gray and bare (lines 7, 8 and 10). Its power comes from where it stands, not from how it looks.

MythThe speaker explains why the jar was placed on the hill.

ActuallyThe speaker never gives a reason. The poem records the act (line 1) and its effects and stops there, which is why the title calls it an anecdote and why the meaning is left to the reader.

AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style

In Wallace Stevens’s “Anecdote of the Jar,” first published in 1919, a speaker describes what happened after setting a single jar on a hill in the wilderness. Read the poem carefully, then write an essay that analyzes how Stevens uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on the relationship between human-made order and the natural world.

What a strong response notices

The personification of the “slovenly wilderness” in line 3 and of the land that rises and sprawls in lines 5 and 6.
The repeated “round” sounds in lines 2, 4, 6 and 7, which make the landscape circle the jar.
The language of rule and dignity: “of a port in air” (line 8) and “took dominion everywhere” (line 9).
The turn in lines 10 and 11, where the jar is “gray and bare” and gives nothing of bird or bush.
The double meaning of “Like nothing else in Tennessee” in line 12, and the return of “Tennessee” from line 1.

Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.

Test yourself

1. Where does the speaker place the jar?

2. What happens to the wilderness in line 6?

3. What does “port” mean in line 8?

4. How does line 10 describe the jar?

5. Which word ends both the first line and the last line?

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Answer

Explain it like I’m 12

Someone puts a plain jar on top of a hill in Tennessee. Suddenly the messy wild land all around seems to be arranged around the jar, like people crowding around a famous person. The jar seems to rule over everything. But the jar is just gray and empty, and nothing grows from it. Birds and bushes come from the land, not from the jar. The poem makes you wonder whether the jar made the place better or just made it less alive.

Compare & connect

Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats

Both poems are about a made vessel and what it means. Keats’s urn is covered in carved scenes and seems to speak; Stevens’s jar is gray, bare and silent, and its power comes only from where it stands.

The Red Wheelbarrow

William Carlos Williams

Another short modernist poem that puts one ordinary object at the center of a scene. Williams keeps his wheelbarrow among rain and living chickens, while Stevens’s jar stands apart from the living land.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Wallace Stevens

Stevens again shows how one thing can organize a whole scene around it. The difference is that the blackbird is alive and always moving, and the jar gives nothing of bird or bush.

Discussion and essay prompts:

💬 Discussion questions

What is Anecdote of the Jar about
What does the jar symbolize in Anecdote of the Jar
What does of a port in air mean
How does Anecdote of the Jar explore the theme of human order and wild nature?
How does Anecdote of the Jar explore the theme of the cost of control?
What is the central conflict in Anecdote of the Jar, and how does it shape the ending?

✎ Essay prompts

Analyze how Wallace Stevens develops the theme of human order and wild nature in Anecdote of the Jar. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
Examine the significance of the jar in Anecdote of the Jar. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
How does Wallace Stevens use personification to shape the reader’s experience of Anecdote of the Jar?
Some readers assume that the poem simply celebrates art’s triumph over nature. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.

Key questions students ask

What is Anecdote of the Jar about
What does the jar symbolize in Anecdote of the Jar
What does of a port in air mean
Is Anecdote of the Jar about art or nature
What does Like nothing else in Tennessee mean
What is the tone of Anecdote of the Jar

Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from Stevens’s first book, Harmonium (Alfred A. Knopf, 1923), checked line by line against the page images of that printing. It is in the public domain.