Paul Fry: I Placed a Jar in Tennessee (0:57)

"As Derrida would say, 'the center limits freeplay'."
Here Professor Fry gives a reading of what is surely one is favorite pieces of poetry, given the lucidity which he recites it, and his comments regarding Derrida.  The recitation is meant to evoke, through poetry, the symbolism of the (perhaps imaginary) vertical axis in the paradigm of Structuralism. Brilliant.

Starts at 12:46. Watch to 13:43

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 everywhere.   

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,   

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

"Anecdote of a Jar" by Wallace Stevens (1919)