Paterson (Revised Edition)

by William Carlos Williams

  I do not know if you will like my poetry or not—that is, how far your own inventive persistence excludes less independent or youthful attempts to perfect, renew, transfigure, and make contemporarily real an old style or lyric machinery, which I use to record the struggle with imagination of the clouds, with which I have been concerned. I enclose a few samples of my best writing. All that I have done has a program, consciously or not, running on from phase to phase, from the beginnings of emotional breakdown, to momentary raindrops from the clouds become corporeal, to a renewal of human objectivity which I take to be ultimately identical with no ideas but in things. But this last development I have yet to turn into poetic reality. I envision for myself some kind of new speech—different at least from what I have been writing down—in that it has to be clear statement of fact about misery (and not misery itself), and splendor if there is any out of the subjective wanderings through Paterson. This place is as I say my natural habitat by memory, and I am not following in your traces to be poetic: though I know you will be pleased to realize that at least one actual citizen of your community has inherited your experience in his struggle to love and know his own world-city, through your work, which is an accomplishment you almost cannot have hoped to achieve. It is misery I see (like a tide out of my own fantasy) but mainly the splendor which I carry within me and which all free men do. But harking back to a few sentences previous, I may need a new measure myself, but though I have a flair for your style I seldom did exactly what you are doing with cadences, line length, sometimes syntax, etc., and cannot handle your work as a solid object—which properties I assume you rightly claim. I don’t understand the measure. I haven’t worked with it much either, though, which must make the difference. But I would like to talk with you concretely on this.

  I enclose these poems. The first shows you where I was 2 years ago. The second, a kind of dense lyric I instinctively try to imitate—after Crane, Robinson, Tate, and old Englishmen. Then, the Shroudy Stranger (3) less interesting as a poem (or less sincere) but it connects observations of things with an old dream of the void—I have real dreams about a classic hooded figure. But this dream has become identified with my own abyss—and with the abyss of old Smokies under the Erie R.R. tracks on straight street—so the shroudy stranger (4) speaking from the inside of the old wracked bum of a paterson or anywhere in america. This is only a half made poem (using a few lines and a situation I had in a dream). I contemplated a long work on the shroudy stranger, his wanderings. Next (5) an earlier poem, Radio City, a long lyric written in sickness. Then a mad song (to be sung by Groucho Marx to a Bop background) (6). The (7) an old style ballad-type ghost dream poem. Then, an ode to the Setting Sun of abstract (8) ideas, written before leaving the hospital, and last an Ode to Judgment, which I just wrote, but which is unfinished. (9) What will come of all this I do not know yet.

  I know this letter finds you in good health, as I saw you speak at the Museum in N. Y. this week. I ran backstage to accost you, but changed my mind, after waving at you, and ran off again.

  Respectfully yours,

  A. G.

  Paris, a fifth floor room, bread

  milk and chocolate, a few

  apples and coal to be carried,

  des briquettes, their special smell,

  at dawn: Paris .

  the soft coal smell, as she

  leaned upon the window before de-

  parting, for work .

  —a furnace, a cavity aching

  toward fission; a hollow,

  a woman waiting to be filled

  —a luminosity of elements, the

  current leaping!

  Pitchblende from Austria, the

  valence of Uranium inexplicably

  increased. Curie, the man, gave up

  his work to buttress her.

  But she is pregnant!

  Poor Joseph,

  the Italians say.

  Glory to God in the highest

  and on earth, peace, goodwill to

  men!

  Believe it or not.

  A dissonance

  in the valence of Uranium

  led to the discovery

  Dissonance

  (if you are interested)

  leads to discovery

  — to dissect away

  the block and leave

  a separate metal:

  hydrogen

  the flame, helium the

  pregnant ash .

  — the elephant takes two years

  Love is a kitten, a pleasant

  thing, a purr and a

  pounce. Chases a piece of

  string, a scratch and a mew

  a ball batted with a paw .

  a sheathed claw .

  Love, the sledge that smashes the atom? No, No! antagonistic cooperation is the key, says Levy .

  Sir Thopas (The Canterbury Pilgrims) says (to Chaucer)

  Namoor—

  Thy drasty rymyng is not

  worth a toord

  —and Chaucer seemed to think so too for he stopped and went on in prose .

  REPORT OF CASES

  CASE I.—M. N., a white woman aged 35, a nurse in the pediatric ward, had no history of previous intestinal disturbance. A sister who lived with her suffered with cramps and diarrhea, later found by us to be due to amebiasis. On Nov. 8, 1944 a stool submitted by the nurse for the usual monthly examination was found to be positive for Salmonella montevideo. The nurse was at once removed from duty with full pay, a measure found to be of advantage in having hospital personnel report diarrheal disturbances without fear of economic reprisal.

  — with ponderous belly, full

  of thought! stirring the cauldrons

  . in the old shed used

  by the medical students for dissections.

  Winter. Snow through the cracks

  Pauvre étudiant .

  en l’an trentième de mon âge

  Item . with coarsened hands

  by the hour, the day, the week

  to get, after months of labor .

  a stain at the bottom of the retort

  without weight, a failure, a

  nothing. And then, returning in the

  night, to find it .

  LUMINOUS!

  On Friday, the twelfth of October, we anchored before the land and made ready to go ashore . There I sent the people for water, some with arms, and others with casks: and as it was some little distance, I waited two hours for them.

  During that time I walked among the trees which was the most beautiful thing which I had ever known.

  . knowledge, the contaminant

  Uranium, the complex atom, breaking

  down, a city in itself, that complex

  atom, always breaking down .

  to lead.

  But giving off that, to an

  exposed plate, will reveal .

  And so, with coarsened hands

  she stirs

  And love, bitterly contesting, waits

  that the mind shall declare itself not

  alone in dreams .

  A man like you should have everything he wants .

  not half asleep

  waiting for the sun to part the labia

  of shabby clouds . but a man (or

  a woman) achieved

  flagrant!

  adept at thought, playing the words

  following a table which is the synthesis

  of thought, a symbol that is to him,

  sun up! a Mendelief, the elements laid

  out by molecular weight, identity

  predicted before found! and .

  Oh most powerful connective, a bead

  to lie between continents through

  which a string passes .

  Ah Madam!

  this is order, perfect and controlled

  on which empires, alas, are built

  But there may issue, a contaminant,

  some other metal radioactive

  a dissonance,
unless the table lie,

  may cure the cancer . must

  lie in that ash . Helium plus, plus

  what? Never mind, but plus . a

  woman, a small Polish baby-nurse

  unable .

  Woman is the weaker vessel, but

  the mind is neutral, a bead linking

  continents, brow and toe

  and will at best take out

  its spate in mathematics

  replacing murder

  Sappho vs Elektra!

  The young conductor gets his orchestra

  and leaves his patroness

  with child.

  . les idées Wilsoniennes nous

  gâtent . the vague irrelevances

  and the destructive silences

  inertia

  As Carrie Nation

  to Artemis

  so is our life today .

  They took her out West on a photographing

  expedition

  to study chiaroscuro

  to Denver, I think.

  Somewhere around there .

  the marriage

  was annulled. When she returned

  with the baby

  openly

  taking it to her girls’ parties, they

  were shocked

  —and the Abbess Hildegard, at her own

  funeral, Rupertsberg, 1179

  had enjoined them to sing the choral, all

  women, she had written for the occasion

  and it was done, the peasants kneeling

  in the background . as you may see

  Advertisement

  The Constitution says: To borrow money on the credit of the United States. It does not say: To borrow money from Private bankers.

  To explain the fallacies and illusions upon which our present method of financing the national budget is based would take too much space and time. To win the cold war we must reform our finance system. The Russians understand only force. We must be stronger than they and build more airplanes.

  FINANCE THE BUILDING OF AIRPLANES AS FOLLOWS:

  Pay the manufacturer with a NATIONAL CREDIT CERTIFICATE.

  Manufacturer deposits the Certificate with his bank the same as a check.

  Banker returns National Credit Certificate to Treasury Dept., which opens UNITED STATES NATIONAL CREDIT for banker.

  Banker in turn now opens BANKER’S CREDIT for depositor. Manufacturer draws checks against his credit as usual.

  Manufacturer pays his workers with checks upon his bank.

  Treasury Dept. pays banker a service charge of 1% for handling the Treasury transaction. If the airplanes cost 1 million dollars the banker’s profit would be $10,000.

  WHAT DO WE ACCOMPLISH BY USING THIS SYSTEM?

  Manufacturer is paid in full.

  Workers are paid in full.

  Bankers make a $10,000. profit every time he handles a 1 million dollar National Credit Certificate.

  We do not add to the National Debt.

  We do not have to increase federal taxation.

  The only cost of the 1 million dollar airplane is only $10,000, the cost of the banker’s service charges.

  We can build 100 airplanes for the price of one.

  I would like to have some smart economist or banker stick out his neck and contradict one single claim I present herewith to the nation.

  ENFORCE THE CONSTITUTION ON MONEY

  * * *

  August Walters, Newark, N. J.

  MONEY : JOKE (i.e., crime

  under the circumstances : value

  chipped away at accelerated pace.)

  — do you joke when a man is dying

  of a brain tumor?

  Take up the individual misfortune

  by buffering it into the locality — not

  penalize him with surgeon’s fees

  and accessories at an advance over the

  market price for

  “hospital income”

  Who gets that? The poor?

  What poor?

  — at $8.50 a day, ward rate?

  short of the possibility of recovery

  And not enrich the widow either

  long past fertility

  Money: Uranium (bound to be lead)

  throws out the firez .

  — the radium’s the credit — the wind in

  the trees, the hurricane in the

  palm trees, the tornado that lifts

  oceans .

  Trade winds that broached a continent

  drive the ship forward .

  Money sequestered enriches avarice, makes

  poverty: the direct cause of

  disaster .

  while the leak drips

  Let out the fire, let the wind go!

  Release the Gamma rays that cure the cancer

  . the cancer, usury. Let credit

  out . out from between the bars

  before the bank windows

  . credit, stalled

  in money, conceals the generative

  that thwarts art or buys it (without

  understanding), out of poverty of

  wit, to win, vicariously, the blue ribbon

  to win

  the Congressional Medal

  for bravery beyond the call of duty but

  not to end as a bridge-tender

  on government dole .

  Defeat may steel us

  in knowledge : money : joke

  to be wiped out sooner or later at stroke

  of pen .

  . just because they ain’t no water fit to drink in that spot (or you ain’t found none) don’t mean there ain’t no fresh water to be had NOWHERE . .

  —and to Tolson

  and to his ode and to Liberia and to Allen Tate

  (Give him credit)

  and to the South generally

  Selah!

  — and to 100 years of it — splits

  off the radium, the Gamma rays

  will eat their bastard bones out who

  are opposed

  Selah!

  Pobres bastardos, misquierdos

  Pobrecitos

  Ay! que pobres

  — yuh wanna be killed with your

  face in the dirt and a son-of-a-bitch

  of a Guardia Civil giving you the

  coup de (dis) grace

  right in the puss . ?

  Selah! Selah!

  Credit! I hope you have a long credit

  and a dirty one

  Selah!

  What is credit? the Parthenon

  What is money? the gold entrusted to Phideas for the

  statue of Pallas Athena, that he “put aside” for private purposes

  — the gold, in short, that Phideas stole

  You can’t steal credit : the Parthenon.

  — let’s skip any reference, at this time, to the Elgin marbles.

  Reuther — shot through a window, at whose pay?

  — then there’s Ben Shahn .

  Here follows a list of the mayors of

  120 American cities in the years following

  the Civil War. . or the War Between

  the States, if you prefer . like

  cubes of fat in the blutwurst of the

  times .

  Credit. Credit. Credit. Give them all credit. They were the fathers of many a later novelist, no worse than the rest.

  Money : Joke

  could be wiped out

  at stroke

  of pen

  and was when

  gold and pound were

  devalued

  Money : small time

  reciprocal action relic

  precedent to stream-lined

  turbine : credit

  Uranium : basic thought—leadward

  Fractured : radium : credit

  Curie : woman (of no importance) genius : radium

  THE GIST

  credit : the gist

  IN

  venshun.

  O.KAY
<
br />   In venshun

  and seeinz az how yu hv/started. Will you consider

  a remedy of a lot :

  i.e. LOCAL control of local purchasing

  power .

  ? ?

  Difference between squalor of spreading slums

  and splendour of renaissance cities.

  Credit makes solid

  is related directly to the effort,

  work: value created and received,

  “the radiant gist” against all that

  scants our lives.

  III.

  Haven’t you forgot your virgin purpose,

  the language?

  What language? “The past is for those who

  lived in the past,” is all she told me.

  Shh! the old man’s asleep

  —all but for the tides, there is no river,

  silent now, twists and turns

  in his dreams .

  The ocean yawns!

  It is almost the hour

  —and did you ever know of a sixty year

  woman with child . ?

  Listen!

  someone’s coming up the path, . perhaps

  it is not too late? Too late .

  JONATAN, bap. Oct. 29, 1752; m. Gritie (Haring?). He was born and brought up at Hoppertown (Hohokus), but in 1779 was running the grist and saw-mill at Wagaraw, now owned by the Alyeas. On the night of April 21, 1779, his wife was aroused by a noise as of someone trying to get into the lower part of the mill, where, for better security, he kept his horses. “Yawntan,” said she in Dutch, “someone is stealing your horses.” Lighting a lantern, he threw open the upper half-door and challenged the marauders. Instantly a shot was fired through the lower half-door, wounding him in the abdomen. He staggered back into the house and fell upon a bed, covering himself up in the blankets. A party of Tories, masked and disguised, rushed in, and, compelling his young wife to hold a candle, they savagely attacked the prostrate form. Once he seized one of the bayonettes and holding it for a moment, cried at his assailant: “Andries, this is an old grudge.” With redoubled fury the inhuman savages bayonetted him, until with a groan he expired. His two infant children who were wont to sleep in a trundle bed beneath his, were horrified spectators of their father’s massacre. After the murderers were gone, his wife and a neighbor took the blood out of the bed in double handfuls. The murdered man had received nineteen or twenty cruel bayonette thrusts. It was believed that some neighbor had led the Tories to the attack, less from political or pecuniary considerations than from motives of private revenge. Hopper was a captain in the Bergen County militia. One of his children was Albert, bap. Oct. 6, 1776. It is said that Jonathan’s children removed to Cincinnati, and there attained some prominence.