Wallace Stevens’s Jar and Redbicycle

The American poet Wallace Stevens wrote a famous poem, “Anecdote of the Jar”:

Anecdote of the Jar — by Wallace 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 everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

An otherwise ordinary jar, because of a change in its position, became the visual centre, thereby changing the order of the entire space. This was also, in fact, a change in ideas and in the order of the inner world.

About ten years ago, I began writing a series of poems about fire hydrants, which later developed into a poetry collection titled Fire Hydrant. For people living in modern society, the fire hydrant is an almost ubiquitous object because of its important function. Yet its monotonous, even ugly appearance also makes it something that people constantly need to hide (in some places, fire hydrants are concealed within walls) or avoid. In writing this series of poems, I wanted to discover poetry in an object that is both so common and so important in people's everyday lives, attempting to reshape its aesthetic value within the space of urban life.

42. To put a green apple
on a red hydrant

43. The first sound from a cicada that I heard when
opened my eyes in the morning
hit a red fire hydrant
This could only happen on a summer morning
When noon comes, it usually drifts further
into the sky

47. A red fire hydrant
on a rainy day—
the red looks showier
I know this wording
is very vulgar but
before finding a better and
more accurate wording
I can only say
a red fire hydrant
on a rainy day—
the red looks showier

— Excerpts from the poetry collection Fire Hydrant

Around the same time, I also took two series of photographs with my mobile phone, one featuring chimneys and the other empty wine bottles. My purpose was very similar to that of writing about fire hydrants. As symbols and remnants of the traditional industrial age, chimneys are also almost synonymous with backwardness, pollution, ugliness and dirt. Empty wine bottles can be found almost everywhere in the streets and alleys of cities, often casually left by passers-by who have just finished drinking or by drunkards, in corners, by roadsides, on the low walls of small gardens, or on top of rubbish bin lids. Some empty bottles are placed in remarkably ingenious positions. I have even seen empty bottles placed in the hands of statues and on car bonnets. Undoubtedly, whether the chimneys of the traditional industrial age or these discarded empty bottles, they occupy the margins of people's attention in everyday life and aesthetic perception. They are considered waste and rubbish that should be removed or cleared away. But in these photographs, they return to the visual centre and become the focus.

It was probably about a year ago that I began following and reading the poetry of a writer using the account name @redbicycle1 on the social media platform X. Their works are all very short, usually three or five lines, sometimes even just one line. Each line is also very short, often consisting of only two or three words. Their work has another very important characteristic: the image of redbicycle appears in many of their poems. It does not appear occasionally, but repeatedly, in large numbers, over a long period of time. Reading their work gives me the impression that redbicycle, this vividly coloured image, does not exist merely to serve their poems. Rather, it is the soul that governs all their work. redbicycle is not simply an image, but the focus and centre of all their work, just like the jar placed on the hill in Wallace Stevens's poem.

The repeated appearance of the same image or symbol within a body of work is not uncommon. However, this approach is mostly relatively limited in scope, often concentrated within a single work or a particular period of writing, where it exists as an element of a work or project. In my reading experience, writing that revolves so extensively and over such a long period around a single specific image or symbol, as @redbicycle1's does, is relatively uncommon. In their work, redbicycle is both an element and the subject of the writing.

*redbicycle
He claims to be
Better looking
Than me
But I’m not
So sure

*redbicycle
Posing as a poet
You can arrest him
But first
You gotta catch him

*Just between
You and me
redbicycle

— From the X account @redbicycle1

@redbicycle1's writing also shows a distinctly fragmented character. Fragmentation is a method of writing commonly used by some writers today, and I often use it myself. However, in most cases, it is used only occasionally or as a supplementary approach, and is usually not carried as far as it is in redbicycle's work. In their writing, the concept of a complete poem seems not to exist. What is called a poem is simply a sentence or a few words. Or perhaps these poems do not exist individually as separate poems, but as a cluster. If we regard this cluster as an organism, each fragment is part of this vast organism.

@redbicycle1's writing appears to be a form of online writing. The account posts very frequently, usually several or even more than ten times a day (this is only my impression; I have not made an actual count). This would require the writer to be constantly in a state of creation. More likely, however, for this writer it is not a particular state of writing at all, but a spontaneous (conscious or automatic) state that emerges when the aesthetic activity of poetry becomes deeply integrated with their own everyday life. There is no need for inspiration or deliberate conception. It is a state in which whatever is written is poetry. Here, poetry does not need to be named by others, nor does it exist apart from life. Poetry is life itself.

Whether it is the jar Wallace Stevens placed on a hill, the fire hydrants, the chimneys of the industrial age, the empty bottles left lying around, or redbicycle, they all share something in their creative approach: by changing the visual position of a particular object, they reshape the order of space, including its aesthetic and conceptual order. Undoubtedly, this process of reshaping works in both directions. If the jar Wallace Stevens placed on a hill is a static poetic installation, redbicycle is more like a flowing presence. Wherever the writer goes, redbicycle appears. It extends further across time and space, and its involvement in and integration with the writer's own life are also deeper. Or perhaps the writer and their work have always been one. A sentence in @redbicycle1's pinned post, “we are art,” also seems to support this interpretation.

@redbicycle1's works have no titles in the usual sense of poetry. All their works can be regarded as a single work. This work has already been written over a long period of time. When it will end, and what form it will eventually take, remain unknown. Perhaps it will suddenly come to an end one day, or perhaps it will never end.

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Author: Fish Lu (魯魚) is a writer, poet, editor, and keen observer of writing practices and trends. Together with his wife, Xi Nan (西楠), a writer and translator, he co-founded the independent online literary journal Whale Review.

You can find him on:
X: @fish_lu_writer
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fish.lu.1004

More by Fish Lu →

Translator: Xi Nan (西楠) is a writer and translator working in English, Spanish and Chinese. Her own work explores memory, time, displacement and the complexities of human relationships, mostly drawing on everyday life and personal experience. Her published works and books can be found through an online search. She now publishes primarily in Whale Review, the independent online literary journal she co-founded with her husband Fish Lu (魯魚). She currently lives in England.

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