William carlos williams poems paterson quote

Paterson (poem)

Poem by William Carlos Williams

Paterson interest an epic poem by American bard William Carlos Williams published, in cardinal volumes, from 1946 to 1958. Probity origin of the poem was comprise eighty-five line long poem written impede 1926, after Williams had read avoid been influenced by James Joyce's latest Ulysses. As he continued writing songlike poetry, Williams spent increasing amounts be in the region of time on Paterson, honing his mould to it both in terms capacity style and structure. While The Cantos of Ezra Pound and The Bridge by Hart Crane could be deemed partial models, Williams was intent ice pick a documentary method that differed outlandish both these works, one that would mirror "the resemblance between the treatment of modern man and the city."[1]

While Williams might or might not receive said so himself, commentators such hoot Christoper Beach and Margaret Lloyd have to one`s name called Paterson his response to T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Pound's Cantos. The long gestation time accomplish Paterson before its first book was published was due in large vicinity to Williams's honing of prosody case of conventional meter and his come to life of an overall structure that would stand on a par with Playwright and Pound yet remain endemically English, free from past influences and experienced forms.

The poem is composed round five books and a fragment ransack a sixth book. The five books of Paterson were published separately hassle 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951 and 1958, and the entire work collected entry one cover in 1963. A revised edition was released in 1992. That corrected a number of printing dominant other textual errors in the initial, especially discrepancies between prose citations middle their original sources and how they appeared in Williams's poem. Paterson commission set in Paterson, New Jersey, whose long history allowed Williams to order depth to the America he craved to write about, and the Metropolis Falls, which powered the town's exertion, became a central image and well 2 of energy for the poem.[2]

Background

Initial efforts

In 1926, influenced by his reading appreciated the novel Ulysses by James Writer, William Carlos Williams wrote an 85-line poem entitled "Paterson"; this poem to sum up won the Dial Award.[3] His fishinging expedition in this poem was to physical exertion for Paterson, New Jersey what Writer had done for Dublin, Ireland, rerouteing Ulysses.[4] Williams wrote, "All that Mad am doing (dated) will go get on to it."[5] In July 1933, he reattempted the theme in an 11-page expository writing poem, "Life Along the Passaic River."[6] By 1937, Williams felt he esoteric enough material to start a large-scale poem on Paterson but realized ditch the project would take considerable date to complete.[7] Moreover, his then-busy medicinal practice precluded his attempting such tidy project at that time.[7] This upfront not stop Williams from taking many preliminary steps in the meanwhile. Of course wrote the poem "Paterson, Episode 17" in 1937 and would recycle excellence into the major work 10 life later.[8] "Morning," written in 1938, was another poem intended for Paterson.[9] Make a fuss 1939, Williams sent James Laughlin kismet New Directions Publishing an 87-page fardel of poems labeled "Detail and Mimicry for the Poem Paterson." This quantity as such was not published.[10] Nevertheless, 15 of its "details," titled "For the Poem Patterson [spelling Williams]" attended in the collection The Broken Span, which New Directions released in 1941.[11]

Addressing The Waste Land

One reason Williams deliberated on Paterson was his longstanding refer about the poem The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, which with closefitting overall tone of disillusionment had spout into a much larger sense capture cultural ennui that had arisen advance the aftermath of World War Crazed and become a touchstone for significance Lost Generation.[12] As Margaret Lloyd states in her critical reappraisal of Paterson, "many critics and poets indicate their poetical inclinations by aligning themselves viz with T.S. Eliot or William Carlos Williams, and ... Paterson was, getaway its very conception, intended to do an impression of a 'detailed reply' (SL, 239) in half a shake the Eliot bias of modern poetry."[13]

To Williams, Eliot "had moved into adroit vacuum with his poem," in Mariani's words, and taken American poetry hash up it.[12] Moreover, Eliot's use of customary meter (though varied in places because of speech rhythms) did not seem indigenous to American speech and thus seemed outside the course that American poesy had seemed headed since the rhyme of Walt Whitman.[14] For American rhyme (and by extension his own work) to progress, Williams argued, it needful to move away from foreign jus civile \'civil law\' and classic forms and essentially disinter its own way.[15]

Hart Crane, with whom Williams was in contact, had matte similarly about The Waste Land.[16] In spite of that, Williams dismissed Crane's reaction to The Waste Land, his long poem The Bridge, as "a direct step difficulty to the bad poetry of steadiness age but especially to that influence regression [French symbolism] which followed Poet and imitates...the Frenchman [Mallarmé] and came to a head in T.S. Poet excellently."[17] Williams also studied The Cantos by Ezra Pound, the first 30 parts of which appeared in 1931. While Williams noted that Pound, beginning Mariani's words, "had managed to thieve the language to new heights," flair had also "deformed the natural groom of speech at times...while somehow redemptive the excellences and even the forms of old."[18]

Developing form and method

Williams, according to Mariani, concluded that tackling Paterson meant "to find a way out of range Eliot's poetic, and beyond Pound's, chimpanzee well...in sculpting the words themselves, knock up with hard, concrete, denotative jagged edges."[16] At the same time, the Creative Jersey dialect the poet wanted be obliged to set into verse could sound, whilst biographer Paul Mariani phrases it, "unrelievedly flat."[19] In a note that attended the "Detail and Parody" manuscript crystal-clear sent to New Directions, Williams rumbling Laughlin and his associate Jim Higgins, "They are not, in some conduct, like anything I have written heretofore but rather plainer, simpler, more eriorly cut...I too have to escape elude my own modes."[20] The formal solve eluded Williams into the early Decennary. In December 1943, he wrote Laughlin, "I write and destroy, write gift destroy. [Paterson is] all shaped scarper on outline and intent, the thing of the thinking is finished nevertheless the technique, the manner and birth method are unresolvable to date."[21] Burdensome a form of American vernacular go would facilitate poetic expression, which approximated speech rhythms but avoided the participation of their patterns as both Writer and Walt Whitman had done, teeming a long trial-and-error process.[22] This time proved doubly frustrating as Williams became impatient with his progress; he needed to "really go to work intersection the ground and dig up clean Paterson that would be a come together Inferno."[23]

Williams also studied Pound's Cantos misunderstand clues on how to structure goodness large work he had in necessitate. Muriel Rukeyser's US1 also caught Williams' attention for its use, with uncluttered technical skill that seemed to adversary Pound's in The Cantos, of specified diverse and seemingly prosaic materials monkey notes from a congressional investigation, sketch X-ray report and a physician's affirmation on cross-examination.[24] He wrote to corollary poet Louis Zukofsky, "I've begun appoint think about poetic form again. And much has to be thought fanciful and written out there before phenomenon can have any solid criticism esoteric consequently well-grounded work here."[20]

In 1944, Colonist read a poem by Byron Vazakas in Partisan Review that would revealing lead him to solutions in modification and tone for Paterson. Vazakas confidential written to Williams before the verse rhyme or reason l had appeared. Williams now wrote Vazakas, praising him for the piece add-on urging him to collect some promote to his work into a book. Filth also asked to see more pleasant Vazakas's work as soon as practicable. According to Mariani, the way Vazakas combined "a long prose line" obscure "a sharply defined, jagged-edged stanza" exchange stand independent of each other all the more remain mutually complementary suggested a comfortable solution.[25] Williams also found an "extension, a loosening up" in tone interchangeable Vazakas's poems—an approach Williams would stroke of luck seconded in the poem "America" infant Russell Davenport in Life Magazine walk November.[26] Between these works and Williams's own continued efforts, he hit function what Mariani calls the "new vernacular tone—authoritative, urbane, assured" that Williams hunted for his large-scale work.[27] By usual June 1944, Williams was working detain earnest on the notes he difficult accumulated for Paterson, "gradually arranging courier rearranging the stray bits with righteousness more solid sections" as he approached a "first final draft" of what would become Paterson I.[28]

In his begin to the revised edition of Paterson, editor Christopher MacGowan points out guarantee, even with Williams' protracted challenges wring finalizing the poem's form, he "seems to have always felt close willing the point of solving his relaxed problems."[29] He promised it to Laughlin for the Spring 1943 book roll of New Directions.[29] He told Laughlin April 1944 that Paterson was "near finished" and nine months later dump it was "nearing completion."[30] Even tail end he had received the galley proofs of Book I in September 1945, Williams was dissatisfied and revised character work extensively. This delayed its expire in print to June 1946.[29]

Composition

Williams old saying the poet as a type game reporter who relays the news wink the world to the people. Operate prepared for the writing of Paterson in this way:

I started thicken make trips to the area. Unrestrainable walked around the streets; I went on Sundays in summer when goodness people were using the park, enthralled I listened to their conversation primate much as I could. I apophthegm whatever they did, and made wear down part of the poem.[31]

The Metrical composition Foundation's biography on Williams notes excellence following source:

With roots score his [short] 1926 poem [also entitled] "Paterson," Williams took the city variety "my 'case' to work up. Outdo called for a poetry such although I did not know, it was my duty to discover or trade mark such a context on the 'thought'."[32]

While writing the poem, Williams struggled side find ways to incorporate the shrouded in mystery world facts obtained during his delving in preparation for its writing. Classification a worksheet for the poem, proscribed wrote, "Make it factual (as integrity Life is factual-almost casual-always sensual-usually visual: related to thought)". Williams considered, on the contrary ultimately rejected, putting footnotes into leadership work describing some facts. Still, rendering style of the poem allowed misunderstand many opportunities to incorporate 'factual information', including portions of his own letter with the American poet Marcia Nardi and fellow New Jersey poet Actor Ginsberg as well as historical script and articles concerning figures from Paterson's past (like Sam Patch and Wife. Cumming) that figure thematically into interpretation poem.[33]

Response

The Poetry Foundation biography classify Williams notes the following critical take to Williams' Modernist epic:

[Williams biographer James] Breslin reported "reception hook the poem never exactly realized her majesty hopes for it." Paterson's mosaic framework, its subject matter, and its plaid passages of poetry and prose helped fuel criticism about its difficulty concentrate on its looseness of organization. In dignity process of calling Paterson an "'Ars Poetica' for contemporary America," Dudley Fitts complained, "it is a pity wind those who might benefit most strange it will inevitably be put blast-off by its obscurities and difficulties." Breslin, meanwhile, accounted for the poem's implicitness by saying, "Paterson has a heaviness of texture, a multi-dimensional quality roam makes reading it a difficult nevertheless intense experience."[32]

Poet/critic Randall Jarrell heroine Book I of the poem work to rule the following assessment:

Paterson (Book I) seems to me the best thing William Carlos Williams has ever written. . .the organization of Paterson is sweet-sounding to an almost unprecedented degree. . . how wonderful and unlikely lapse this extraordinary mixture of the chief delicate lyricism of perception and sadness with the hardest and homeliest truth should ever have come into being! There has never been a lyric more American.[34]

However, Jarrell was terribly disappointed with Books II, III, enthralled IV of the poem, writing excellence following:

Paterson has been getting in or by comparison steadily worse [with each subsequent Book]... All three later books are shoddier organized, more eccentric and idiosyncratic, a cut above self-indulgent, than the first. And hitherto that is not the point, description real point: the poetry, the melodic rightness, the queer wit, the dubious and dazzling perfection of so some of Book I have disappeared—or miniature least, reappear only fitfully.[34]

Awards

The U.S. Genetic Book Award was reestablished in 1950 with awards by the book exertion to authors of 1949 books come by three categories. William Carlos Williams won the first National Book Award receive Poetry.[35]

References in popular culture

Williams himself "looms large" in Jim Jarmusch's 2016 ep, Paterson starring Adam Driver.[36] According come to get a 2017 review, the "linguistic infrastructure" of the film was informed offspring concepts found in the five-volume poem.[36]

References

  1. ^Beach, Christopher (2003). The Cambridge introduction see to twentieth-century American poetry (1st publ. ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge UP. pp. 109–16. ISBN .
  2. ^MacGowan, Christopher (2003). William Carlos Williams: poetry for grassy people. New York: Sterling. p. 8. ISBN .
  3. ^Mariani, pp. 204, 263.
  4. ^Mariani, p. 263.
  5. ^As quoted in Mariani, p. 263.
  6. ^Mariani, pp. 343–4.
  7. ^ abMariani, pp. 387–8.
  8. ^Mariani, p. 414.
  9. ^Mariani, proprietress. 415.
  10. ^Mariani, pp. 417–18.
  11. ^Mariani, p. 445.
  12. ^ abMariani, p. 191.
  13. ^Lloyd, 23.
  14. ^Layng, p. 187; Mariani, p. 191.
  15. ^Holsapple, 84.
  16. ^ abMariani, p. 250.
  17. ^As quoted in Mariani, p. 328, comments in brackets Mariani.
  18. ^Mariani, pp. 311–12.
  19. ^Mariani, holder. 418.
  20. ^ abAs quoted in Mariani, proprietor. 418.
  21. ^As quoted in Mariani, p. 486.
  22. ^Layne, p. 188; Mariani, pp. 418–19.
  23. ^As quoted in Mariani, p. 419.
  24. ^Mariani, p. 417.
  25. ^Mariani, p. 492.
  26. ^Mariani, pp. 499–500.
  27. ^Mariani, p. 500.
  28. ^As quoted in Mariani, pp. 492–3.
  29. ^ abcMacGowan, p. xi.
  30. ^As quoted in MacGowan, possessor. xi.
  31. ^Bollard, Margaret Lloyd (1975). "The "Newspaper Landscape" of Williams' "Paterson"". Contemporary Literature. 16 (3). University of Wisconsin Press: 317–327. doi:10.2307/1207405. JSTOR 1207405.
  32. ^ abPoetry Foundation recapitulation on Williams
  33. ^Bollard (1975), p. 320
  34. ^ abJarrell, Randall. "Paterson by William Carlos Williams." No Other Book: Selected Essays. Novel York: HarperCollins, 1999.
  35. ^"National Book Awards – 1950". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-02-25.
  36. ^ abCrust, Kevin (18 January 2017). "Jim Jarmusch, Ron Padgett and the incomparable poetry of 'Paterson'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 29 October 2023.

Sources

  • Beach, Christopher, The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Poetry (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Tradition Press, 2003). ISBN 0-521-89149-3.
  • Holsapple, Bruce, "Williams smokescreen Form: Kora in Hell". In Hatlen, Burton and Demetres Tryphonopoulous (eds), William Carlos Williams and the Language follow Poetry (Orono, Maine: The National Rhyme Foundation, 2002). ISBN 0-943373-57-3.
  • Layne, George W., "Rephrasing Whitman: Williams and the Visual Idiom." In Hatlen, Burton and Demetres Tryphonopoulous (eds), William Carlos Williams and authority Language of Poetry (Orono, Maine: Goodness National Poetry Foundation, 2002). ISBN 0-943373-57-3.
  • Lloyd, Margaret, William Carlos Williams' Paterson: A Depreciative Reappraisal (London and Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Press, 1980). ISBN 0-8386-2152-X.
  • Mariani, Undesirable, William Carlos Williams: A New Faux Naked (New York: McGraw Hill Restricted area Company, 1981). ISBN 0-07-040362-7.
  • Williams, William Carlos, stuck fast. Christopher MacGowan, Paterson: Revised Edition (New York: New Directions, 1992). ISBN 0-8112-1225-4.