Tennessee, located midway between the fertile climes of southern Florida and the wintry north, represents an ideal location for Wallace Stevens to explore his attitudes toward identity type creativity that is created in one or the other. location. The South, characterized by its heat and wildness, collides with the “gray and bare” industrial North (10) on this Tennessee hill in “Anecdote of the Jar”. Although the jar takes the upper hand, the poet does not necessarily favor either side of the conflict since Stevens was “divided…about this Southern milieu” (Stevens, 208). Here we see that Stevens lies both geographically and poetically between the two extremes. He has not yet arrived at the destination of his poetic journey, but seems closer to the beginning than the end of his journey. Old images of nature and Keats's Urn crop up here in Tennessee and although he has not yet finished "taking the leaves off the tree," Stevens has more than begun to strip it. "Anecdote of the Jar" reflects Stevens's ambivalence about man's ability to create order in a chaotic world and the role of the artist or poet in using ancient forms to create a new order. The pot, a man-made object, represents the power of human creation through art to control and confine natural creation. The Stevens pot is more than just a container, it is capable of both defining and confining the natural setting it surrounds, as it “has taken dominion everywhere” (9). The order imposed by the jar is capable of taming the desert which “has risen to it” (5), but it is made “wilder” (6). The roundness of the jar is its defining characteristic and is indeed the first attribute attributed to it (2). The sound of the "round" dominates the poem just as the pot dominates nature... middle of paper ... point of vivid contrast. The pot helps create a place of order in what is seemingly a disorganized system, but in reality the wilderness also has its own kind of order. One of the goals of art has been to reflect, imitate, or oppose this order. As a poet, Stevens faces the challenge of using the poetic form, the pot, in a fresh and interesting way. To do this, he must expose the urn that Keats left him. When the urn is cleared of images of spring melodies and delighted lovers, we are left with only the shape of the pot. The pot is lifeless and bare, but not necessarily sterile. It is the medium on which Stevens can develop his own poetic voice and identity. Halfway through his journey from South to North, Stevens has completed the task of cleaning out all the old images and is now able to begin filling the pot with new ones...