In
this post I offer analysis and commentary about two of my favorite poems.
ANECDOTE
OF THE JAR 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 the Jar” has taken its honored place in the American
canon as a modernist classic. It is widely anthologized, commonly studied, and
extensively expounded. We might ask ourselves why a poem so humdrum on the
surface has attracted so much attention.
At
first glance, the poem appears to be about just a jar. The poem says nothing
more than what it literally states. The speaker in the poem says he placed a
jar on top of a hill, and the wilderness grew up around the jar. He reports his
impression of the entire scenario—the jar dominated the burgeoning
surroundings, not the other way around. We are tempted to simply acknowledge
his sentiments and give them no further thought.
However,
the way the poem is written, indeed, the very fact that the anecdote is
constructed as a poem, tells us that we are being presented with more than just
a trivial story.
We
are told that once the jar had been implanted, the wilderness was “no longer
wild.” Atop the hill, the jar assumed a notable salience—it was “of a port in
air” and it “took dominion everywhere.” Whatever the state of Tennessee gave
“of bird or bush,” the jar exceeded it “like nothing else in Tennessee.” In
other words, the jar is more important than the state of Tennessee, and the
treatment of the jar in the poem indicates that it is more than what it is and
that it stands for something else.
Some
have said that the jar represents the dominion of humanity over nature—a
plausible enough interpretation. Others say the poem plays on the timeless
motifs elaborated in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats. Still others understand
the poem to be about patriarchal oppression, wherein the wilderness is cast as
feminine.
Whatever
the jar symbolizes, the most compelling aspect of this poem is its assertive
and insistent symbolism. “Anecdote of the Jar” is a symbolic poem. It cannot be
interpreted any other way.
MANUNGGUL
JAR (Manunggul Cave, Palawan; late Neolithic) by Luisa A. Igloria
Someone
is loosing the rope
that
tethered our boat
to
the pier. Here we are, easing
forward
into the fog, into the cold
that
seems to have gotten colder.
We’ll
pass the shuttered town,
we’ll
slip into the currents
blue
with the ink of unborn stars.
We’ll
love them no less, no more,
even
as the water swirls, changing
from
jade to milk. The world we enter
then
leave is round as the bowl of our
desires,
and here the word for horizon
is
the same as faithfulness: invisible
rudder
our hands have always held,
even
as now we cross our arms
across
our chests, preparing
to
travel farther, deeper.
Wallace
Stevens has been described as “willfully difficult.” This recently published poem
by Luisa A. Igloria about a Philippine burial jar is, in contrast, an easy
read, nowhere near impenetrable.
Between
the archaeological object in the poem and death there is a literal and symbolic
connection: the jar is used to entomb the bones of the dead.
Principal
subject of the poem is the clay sculpture that embellishes the
jar’s lid. Depicted in miniature are two voyagers on a boat, Charon’s yacht
minus the ferryman.
The
poem is distinguished by its deftly wrought, often multi-layered metaphors—ocean
currents of a cosmos “blue with the ink of unborn stars,” for example, or our
desires a “bowl” making up a “world,” the description of a state of being, as
it were. Memorable images in dreamy succession evoke contemplative introspection.
The
poem is not simply about death but also the afterlife. The afterlife is
understood not as extinction but mystery, so that death, and in continuity with
it, life, converge.
Two
last lines of the poem imply endless advancement in the afterlife, Saint
Gregory of Nyssa’s epektasis or “perpetual
progress,” possibly.
Closing
softly—we feel the pause in “farther, deeper”—the poem rounds out.
It
is a fine lyric masterpiece.
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| Gemini |
