"Anecdote of the Jar"

Verlyn Klinkenborg uses Wallace Stevens' poem "Anecdote of the Jar" to introduce "Without Walls", a NYTimes magazine piece about landscape architecture.

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

Here is the Antique Fruit Jar Hall of Fame.