the terrifying form of monstrosity

He placed a jar upon a hill, and that placement created a center, around which all the wilderness of Tennessee was ordered. Quite an artificial and arbitrary center, wouldn't you agree? Setting down the jar set forth the landscape, no longer wild, freeplay locked out; the jar is within Tennessee and yet also outside it.

ANECDOTE OF THE JAR

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 grey and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

            — Wallace Stevens