Paterson

At the beginning of this Book, a March spring comes to Paterson the city as Paterson the man ages. Paterson considers the role of virginity in marriage. An interlude of a letter to Paterson describes the beauty of flowers, which are named in detail, and memories of nights at a friend’s house together. A verse section describes the naturalist John James Audubon’s journey through Kentucky by boat. The poet A.G. writes to thank Dr. Williams, the author, for an introduction to a book of poems.

An interlude signed G.S. describes a drunken night negotiating price with a young woman sex worker in a Spanish-speaking country. A section narrated by a man’s lover describes the physical sensation of attraction. A dated journal entry focuses on President FDR’s financial policies and the details of treasury reports. The narrator sees a woman dressed in men’s clothes on the streets of Paterson—he seeks her, though she disappears into the crowd; he says “have you read anything that I have written? / It is all for you / or the birds / or Mezz Mezzrow” (220). A prose section describes listening to the blues, especially the tenor saxophone and the vocals of Bessie Smith. It’s followed by a verse section which connects the mythological figures of the satyr and centaur to the history of painting and art generally.

An imagined question-and-answer section has a back-and-forth with Williams the poet and an unnamed question-asker who wants to know Williams’s definition of poetry. Williams sets out a definition of it as operating on at least two levels, one at the level of language and another, if not more, at the level of meaning.

An ekphrastic section explores a Nativity painting by Peter Brueghel the elder—likely “The Adoration of the Kings” (1564), and the narrator connects the painting to the dignity of poor people. A letter from Edward addressed to Bill (Paterson or Paterson as a stand-in for the author) describes an impoverished Danish woman who has a child by an American writer and struggles to feed both herself and the child. An older Paterson, “approaching death” (231) contemplates his flower garden and a woman he failed to woo when younger. He references the spring imagery in the opening lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and considers at length the Unicorn Tapestries, particularly The Unicorn is in Captivity and No Longer Dead (c. 1500). In verse, he imagines the unicorn hunt and the figure of a young woman in the leaves. Book 5, and the entire text, ends with a consideration of poetic meter.