Point of View

“Anecdote of the Jar” pulls a bit of a bait-and-switch method when establishing its point of view. In its first line, the poem seemingly positions itself from a first-person singular perspective – “I placed a jar in Tennessee” (1). However, the direct use of a marker of a first-person point of view in the form of “I” or “me,” for example, never occurs again in the poem. Taken without its first line, “Anecdote of the Jar” would seem very much to be from a third-person perspective. The missing first-person perspective in the rest of Stevens’ poem suggests a rapid retraction of personal agency, on the part of the poem’s speaker. While he may be able to initially engage in an act of creation though the act of “[placement],” that creation, represented by the jar, soon takes on a will of its own disappointment from itself as...