Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 10.01 Environment and Ecology
Presentation #1 Title
"Like Nothing Else in Tennessee": Wallace Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar," Elizabethton Tennessee, and the Industrial Logging of Appalachia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Wallace Stevens composed his now famous poem, "Anecdote of the Jar," upon visiting Elizabethton, Tennessee--in Carter County, in the upper East region of the state-- in April 1918. In the poem, the first-person narrator/ poet depicts an obscurely allegorical act of creation. The poet places a jar (a moonshine jar?) on a hill. The jar, in turn, makes the "slovenly wilderness" surround the hill. The jar takes "dominion." The hill is "no longer wild." Much energy has been expended on discussions of the poem as an aesthetic statement. But what if we read it as a work of Appalachian literature? What does it mean, for instance, that Stevens was doing business, in his role as an insurance company executive, with a lumber company that was, just at that time, in Carter County, at the end of World War I, cutting some of the last great stands of old growth Appalachian hardwood cove forest? Does the poem say anything about the colonial relations between Northeastern/ International capital markets and Appalachian natural resources exploitation? In my presentation, I propose to tell the story of Wallace Stevens in East Tennessee. I will present my new findings about what Stevens was doing in Elizabethton. And I will re-read "Anecdote of the Jar," his canonical literary-modernist work, in a historical context, as Appalachian literature.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Kevin O'Donnell is Professor of Literature and Language, and Director of the Environmental Studies minor, at East Tennessee State University.
"Like Nothing Else in Tennessee": Wallace Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar," Elizabethton Tennessee, and the Industrial Logging of Appalachia
Corbly Hall 244
Circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Wallace Stevens composed his now famous poem, "Anecdote of the Jar," upon visiting Elizabethton, Tennessee--in Carter County, in the upper East region of the state-- in April 1918. In the poem, the first-person narrator/ poet depicts an obscurely allegorical act of creation. The poet places a jar (a moonshine jar?) on a hill. The jar, in turn, makes the "slovenly wilderness" surround the hill. The jar takes "dominion." The hill is "no longer wild." Much energy has been expended on discussions of the poem as an aesthetic statement. But what if we read it as a work of Appalachian literature? What does it mean, for instance, that Stevens was doing business, in his role as an insurance company executive, with a lumber company that was, just at that time, in Carter County, at the end of World War I, cutting some of the last great stands of old growth Appalachian hardwood cove forest? Does the poem say anything about the colonial relations between Northeastern/ International capital markets and Appalachian natural resources exploitation? In my presentation, I propose to tell the story of Wallace Stevens in East Tennessee. I will present my new findings about what Stevens was doing in Elizabethton. And I will re-read "Anecdote of the Jar," his canonical literary-modernist work, in a historical context, as Appalachian literature.
