IN THE LAST CHAPTER I STRESSED that the initial stages of Paterson, book 1, was dominated by Williams’s expression of his belief in the redemptive power of the poet’s focus on the materiality of language over ideas. However, the overriding commitment of Williams to the honesty of his report, the very heart of his link to Unitarian ideals, necessitated that Paterson “resemble my own life as I more and more thought of it.” For the poem to achieve this and so stand as an authentic record of his life and the values that underpinned his commitment to work, it needed to reflect Williams’s struggle to maintain his faith in the efficacy of the work he had set himself. His continuing determination to find an appropriate form for the subsequent books of Paterson reflects his ongoing struggle to believe, and so maintain the path towards knowledge he had set himself. In this struggle, in dictating the character of his long poem, we see him questioning the hopes he had invested in it with book 1.

Book 2 of Paterson posits examples of the failure of people to realize any sense of value beyond their basest desires, a realization that is undermining the poet Paterson’s own role as redeemer. Klaus Ehrens’s sermon in the park to the inhabitants of Paterson provides the focus of book 2 and sees him relate his experience of actively embracing an alternative source of value. He has responded to the voice of God telling him to give up his money and so clear a path for the pursuit of his true happiness:

With the failure of his meager audience in the park to respond to his sermon, the responsibility falls back on the listening poet, a figure now dogged by his own doubts about such a role:

More and more frequently Paterson’s awareness and fear of failure dominates the poem and is only cut through by rare but strong epiphanic moments of recognition and renewed resolve.