Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) composed 'Anecdote of the Jar' in 1918 and it was published a year later. 'Anecdote of the Jar' by Wallace Stevens is a descriptive lyric. The poem mirrors the creative soul of the time in which it was composed.
What Stevens is truly attempting to state is that one thing offers importance to another. Out of the considerable number of hills in Tennessee, there was one, in particular, that was separate: the hill with the container. Before Stevens set that container on the hill, it was only an ordinary hill canvassed in "careless wild" yet after Stevens put the container on the hill, the wild never again secured the hill, yet encompassed the container. The container changed the importance of the hill and the region around it.
Stevens utilizes the container as an analogy for humankind and its manifestations in a generally non-human world. It is a delegate poem of mid-twentieth century reasonableness. In 1923 Alfred A. Knopf distributed his first book, Harmonium, which included 'Anecdote of the Jar'.
