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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Few poems have ever been priced as high as William Carlos Williams' Paterson, if one may borrow the central metaphor of Book III in order to suggest the enormous cost in concentration which must be met before any adequate evaluation can be made. If this work were built around a consistently presented hero—the Paterson of the title—that cost might not be so prohibitive as many readers will find it; but when Williams asserts in the introduction to Book III (“The Library”) that Paterson is not only the hero but also the heroine, not only a city but also cliffs and waterfall, one cries out for a critic to assist him, as the sea-god did Peleus, in conquering the metamorphic problem. Before judging the total merit of Paterson, however, one must weather a preliminary season of understanding, of looking hard and often at aim and structure—in brief, of giving the poem the creative reading that such an undertaking deserves. The poet, realizing the difficulty of meeting this high cost, has given some measure of help in the headnote to the entire poem, and also in the list of topics which he places immediately after the words Book One, as if in apposition; the latter consists of eighteen phrases separated by semicolons, each phrase a possible definition of Paterson. The last of these phrases, and one which may well supply a key-quotation for this essay, is “a dispersal and a metamorphosis.”
1 R. W. Flint, “I Will Teach You My Townspeople ” Kenyan Review, XII (Autumn 1950), 538.
2 “The Fatal Blunder,” Quarterly Review of Literature, II (1944), 126.
3 Archives of the Stale of New Jersey, 1st Series, XXXIX, 134.
4 Federal Writers Project, New Jersey: A Guide to Its Present and Past (New York, 1939), p. 359.
5 William Nelson and Charles A. Shriner, History of Pater son and Its Environs (New York, 1920), I, 156.
6 In the American Grain (Norfolk, Conn., 1925), p. 195.
7 Robert Lowell, review of Paterson One, Sewanee Review, LV (Summer 1947), 501.
8 Edwin Honig, “Paterson Two,” Poetry, LXXIV (April 1949), 37–38.
9 Louis Martz, Yale Review, XXXVIII (Sept. 1948), 149.
10 The DAB (XIV, 292) relates how Sam “in his cups would parrot his two apothegms ‘There's no mistake in Sam Patch’ and ‘Some things can be done as well as others’.”
11 Rochester, A Story Historical (Rochester, 1884), p. 188. It is interesting to note that the fatal plunge took place on Friday the thirteenth.
12 History of the Old Dutch Church at Totowa, Paterson, New Jersey, 1755–1827 (Paterson, 1892), p. 39.
13 Quoted in Nelson, p. 40.
14 William Carlos Williams (Norfolk, Conn., 1950), p. 126.
15 The Poet and His Public,“ Partisan Review, XII (Sept.-Oct. 1946), 494.
16 “Shapiro Is All Right,” Kenyon Review, VII (Winter 1946), 123.
17 “Letter to an Australian Editor,” Briarcliff Quarterly, in (Oct. 1946), 208. The poet's function, then, becomes a metamorphic one: “Let me insist, the poet's very life, but also his forms originate in the political, social, and economic maelstrom on which he rides. At his best he transmutes them to new values fed from the society of which he is a part if he will continue fertile.”
18 “Reply to a Young Scientist,” Direction, I (Autumn 1934), 28.
19 “Notes from a Talk on Poetry,” Poetry, XIV (July 1919), 213.
20 Koch, p. 135.
21 “Things Others Never Notice,” Poetry, XLIV (April 1934), 105.
22 In the American Grain, p. 120.
23 “Notes from a Talk on Poetry,” p. 215.
24 “Paterson: The Falls,” in Selected Poems (Norfolk, Conn., 1949), p. 99.
25 “In Praise of Marriage,” Quarterly Review of Literature, a (1944), 149.
26 (Boston, 1920), p. 24.
27 A lyric by that name in Tlie Clouds, Aigeltinger, Russia, etc. (Wells College Press and Cummington Press, 1948, p. 41) includes a line which sums up the philosophies of both Wallace Stevens and Williams: “We sail a changeful sea through halcyon days and storm.”
28 “But the particular characteristic of modern poetry has been its dispersive quality.” Williams, “Notes from a Talk on Poetry,” p. 215.
29 “An Approach to the Poem,” English Institute Annual (New York, 1948), p. 60.
30 “Letter to an Australian Editor,” p. 207.
31 Parker Tyler, “The Poet of Paterson Book One,” Briarclif Quarterly, in (Oct. 1946), 171.
32 The debt to Pound is obvious, and welcome. Not only does Williams quote directly from what are undoubtedly communications to him from Pound but he poeticizes Pound's fiery economic theses in a most successful manner.
33 “Preface,” Quarterly Review of Literature, II (1944), 348.
34 Williams, “Struggle of Wings,” The Dial, LXXXI (Jan. 1926), 24.
35 The Complète Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, 1906–1938 (Norfolk, Conn., 1938), p. 312.