I placed a jar in Tennessee -- 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 every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

I guess the point of this poem is juxtaposition. Putting something very small and very strange in the middle of something large is an easy way of changing it. Then again, who really understands Stevens? I think figuring out The Idea of Order at Key West should be a Millennium Prize problem.