William Carlos Williams – Paterson review

William Carlos Williams. Paterson, Books I-IV.
New Directions, 1992. 311p.

I’d probably recommend Paterson as the first or second Modernist projects to read (next to H.D.’s Trilogy and Williams’ Kora in Hell or Spring and All).

I chose to read the first four books even though there are a Book V and VI (Williams did not finish the sixth). The reason I did not incorporate the final two books is because Williams initially sees the first four as his project, and that this project was completed more or less by one version of him while Book V and VI were produced by a slightly-older, different version. (I will be discussing Books V and VI on their own to see if they fit in with the project or if Williams was right in separating them as extensions or expansions of the completed project.).
Williams’ own introduction attempts to establish the structure of the poem, incorporating ideas that mirror Socrates’ notion of “isomorphism” from Plato’s Republic. According to his short introduction the poem also takes its form from the Passaic Falls: “the river above the falls”,”the catastrophe of the Falls itself”, “the river below the Falls”, and the entrance at the end into the great sea” (xiii, 1951). For Williams, Paterson is a man but also a city, this line is blurred vaguely at points throughout the first four books; though it is hard to make out the man, Williams does an excellent job of showing us the layers of the city.
Williams’ intro also expresses concern with the general substance of his epic. “The noise of the Falls seemed to me to be a language which we were and are seeking and in my search, as I looked about, became to struggle to interpret and use this language. This is the substance of the poem. But the poem is also the search of the poet for his language, his own language which I, quite apart from the material theme had to use to write at all. I had to write in a certain way to gain a verisimilitude with the object I had in mind” (xiv). The great thing about Williams’ work, and Paterson, is his definition and execution of verisimilitude is much different than what we might encounter with say, a contemporary straight-forward narrative poet.

Clearly this is a large and ambitious project, and Williams’ hasn’t ruined his project with his short introduction, more or less he’s provided a foundation: Content/Material: Passaic Falls, history, biography, Concept: Comparison between Man and City, their similarities as agents, abstract ideas, and general existence, and Substance: Language, grounded in the material, also the poet coming to terms or locating his language. An interesting aspect about language arises through Williams’ conflict: That a poet can be old and well known and still not feel certain about his or language.  How Williams manages to interrelate and occasionally break apart these concepts is the main tension and engaging aspect of the work. This all sounds very dense, but the language of Paterson is direct and easily understood, much like the Williams we are used to.

However, even though this looks and sounds like Williams we know and love, this is an older, and in many ways, just as daring-as-he-is-old poet. Williams doesn’t seem to have slowed down, and he has even begun to push his subject matter even more. Paterson contains a large amount of subject material and most of it is pulled from just about every angle, from philosophy to history to biography to human relationships to sex to war…etc.

Ex: “they sought safety (in books)/ but ended battering against glass/ at the high windows/ The Library is desolation, it has a smell of its own/ of stagnation and death       . / Beautiful Thing! / –the cost of dreams’ in which we search, after a surgery/ of the wits and must translate”. Williams’ shows us the torment and hopelessness of Paterson while also adding another layer of interpretation to the prose sections dispersed within the text.

Williams makes great use of folklore and supposed historical events of Paterson (regardless of truth value, the historically based prose sections add depth to the poems and vice versa). It’s important to follow this device of hybrid through Paterson, since it becomes a way to see how these sections shift and add depth to each book differently; as the books change with the form of the Falls so does their content. This might be a painstakingly obvious observation, but how Williams’ accomplishes this is through the same technique we’ve seen in Spring and All, where both the prose and poetry explain or enhance the meaning of the other. An interesting story appears in Book I Part I about “Sam Patch”, a man who throws himself off high places into bodies of water and has a pet bear. This hearkens the kind of emotive response we might get from reading a Paul Bunyan folk tale, but Williams again deepens what seems so straight forward and obvious. This technique demonstrates what poetic experience has taught Williams: descriptions of the obvious in a new way can transcend simple line and word juxtapositions, in turn becoming very useful for sustaining and allowing subject matter to be malleable.  This also allows the reader to not be as strict towards Williams’ goals for Paterson. One could argue, through Book I-IV, Williams’ has failed in not only showing Paterson the man, but also in clearly articulating his metaphorical/personified outset between the man and the city. Clarity being one of Williams’ greatest assets as a poet, it’s ironic that he doesn’t completely pull through. However, the language and structure of the poem definitely are interesting enough to sustain interest. The diction, repeating images, and prose sections are enough of a reason to read and re-read Paterson.

Of course, Paterson gives me the impression that I missed a lot on the first read through. There is definitely an aesthetic return value but also a demand the reader returns and studies the poem in order to grasp the deeper elements. Paterson is a quicker read but is just as deep and complex without sacrificing accessibility or intellect; it is also charming and exuberant, in the way Williams always has been. At the same time though, this is a different kind of chance-taking Williams, but one definitely worth reading. I will definitely pick this up again.