Paterson (Revised Edition)

by William Carlos Williams

  no language In 12th Street “So be it” refrain follows here, and is omitted following “home”

  reels … So be it In 12th Street reads

  reels—caught still in its wrappings,

  wind-held. So be it. Starts back amazed

  from the reading.

  98–99 Gently! … hat! These lines are part of a poem WCW published in 1937 titled “Patterson: Episode 17” [sic], seventy-eight lines of which are incorporated into Book III. Further material from the poem is on pp. 104–105 and 127–128. In “Patterson: Episode 17,” the concept of “Beautiful Thing” is first linked to a figure beating a carpet on a church lawn, but the two opening stanzas that describe the figure, and a concluding stanza, are omitted from the material incorporated into Paterson. An early draft of the 1937 poem now at Harvard is titled “To a Tall Young Colored Woman.” For the 1937 poem see CP1 439–43.

  99 The “Castle” … Lambert Catholina Lambert (1834–1923) was born in Yorkshire, England, and became one of Paterson’s richest mill owners. He built his Castle residence “Belle Vista” in 1892. It was sold to the city in 1925 and now houses the Passaic County Park Commission and the Passaic County Historical Society. In the winter of 1936 the art gallery wing, by then in disrepair, was demolished, despite the opposition of two fierce editorials in The Prosfector. For the story of Lambert and the Castle see the richly illustrated Silk and Sandstone: The Story of Catholina Lambert and His Castle, by Flavia Alaya (Passaic County Historical Society, 1984).

  99 The “Castle” … be it” 12th Street carries an additional line before this passage, “Come death! Come clean death!” and adds following the passage “Come wind! Come flood! Come cleansing/fire. So be it. Come end of the world:”

  99 Rose and I … now WCW told his friend Robert Carlton Brown (1886–1959) on September 10, 1948, “Paterson III is stalled for the moment. I’m going to use your letter about Gurlie Flynn and the others in it” (Southern Illinois Univ. Library). Rose was Brown’s second wife. The letter has not been found, but a Yale Za188 version of this passage is headed “Excerpt from letter” and begins with an additional sentence: “Your Paterson, Book II should sell because it hits the semi-documentary groove.” On February 25 [1950?] Brown wrote to WCW of his enthusiastic reading of Book III, adding “I called Rose to my side to look at the damned thing now” (Yale uncat.). The famous “Paterson Pageant” was staged in New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1913 for the benefit of the Paterson strikers.

  Za 188 reads “on the Pagent,” and “the Union Hall.”

  102–103 The Indians … among us” The story appears in “Extracts From a Work Called ‘Breeden Raedt’” in New York Documentary History IV, 67–68, although it is unclear if this is WCW’s source. WCW’s first paragraph summarizes the language of this account, and then follows it almost verbatim—although omitting some specific details of the torture. A much shorter account appears in both Nelson and NS, although only Nelson 38 gives the New York source.

  103–104 From 1869 … assembled … A spectator … adventures. WCW’s own prose, in verse in early drafts. KH and Thirlwall both note The Prospector as the source of the information in this passage. The August 7, 1936, issue carried a long article on the tightrope performances over the Falls of DeLave, Leslie, and Dobbs, including a photograph of one of Leslie’s performances. The article contains the central details of WCW’s passage.

  110 the Englishman WCW’s father, William George Williams, who died in 1918 and who figures more extensively here in earlier drafts of the poem. New Barbadoes is an area in Bergen County, New Jersey.

  114 to it … mother? ) These lines are spaced differently on the Yale Za188 and KS typescripts and in the first edition. The change occurs with the first printing of NC:

  to it not by intellection but

  by sub-intellection (to want to be

  blind as a pretext for

  saying, We’re so proud of you!

  A wonderful gift! How do

  you find the time for it in

  your busy life? It must be a great

  thing to have such a pastime.

  But you were always a strange

  boy. How’s your mother? )

  114–115 With due ceremony … distributed Adapted and rearranged from material in Nelson 35–38. The NS 51–54 version is almost the same, but Za188 follows Nelson where they differ.

  115–116 It started … night… When discovered … doomed Source not found, but possibly WCW’s summary of information in NS 505 and elsewhere. The passages are extensively revised in Za188.

  115 song/songs The Tiger’s Eye (1949)

  118 An iron dog Weaver 210 cites an article on “The Brass Dog” (actually made of sheet-iron) that is probably WCW’s source, Passaic County Historical Society Bulletin (November 1944), 19–20. The dog hung outside a tin-shop. “At 12.30 a.m. December 9, 1846 the shop was completely burned out, together with several buildings along side, but the dog kept watch over the place never to move from the spot.” WCW’s copy of this issue of the Bulletin is with his papers at Yale (Za W677).

  118 iron dog/bronze dog 12th Street (1949)

  laughter … green 12th Street has an additional line: “an empurpled face choked blue with laughter”

  a multiformity/the multiformity The Tiger’s Eye (1949)

  124–125 Hi Kid … So long KH annotates on UVA typescript “letter to my maid Gladys [Enalls] from her girlfriend [Dolly],” and see Weaver 210. Gladys ran away in 1942, and the letter was among a number found in her room, some of which WCW transcribes in Za188 for possible inclusion in Paterson. The original of the letter he finally included, postmarked December 2, 1941, is at UVA.

  In the various retypings some changes crept into the idiosyncratic spelling and diction of the original letter. In two cases—“I was a feeling good” and “car slaped on brakes”—I have restored the original because the first edition reproduced it, and the editorial changes (“I was feeling good” and “slapped” ) were made posthumously with the 1963 printing.

  Other verbal differences from the original that occur through various retypings:

  only high browns/only of high browns

  stopped facing/stoped facing

  half filled/half fill

  ever since/every since

  supposed to be the father/suppose to be the father

  supposed to be going to have/suppose to be going to have

  to have kids/to have kid This change is marked by WCW, Za188.

  3rd/3th

  3 kids/3 kid reads “kid” on KS typescript

  your next/the next

  Well here/Will here

  WCW omits a one-sentence paragraph following “everywhere” and before “Bab” in all typescripts: “Well you said you was coming Thankgiven why didn’t you come?”

  The ellipsis covers one and a half pages in the original that appear on early typescripts but are later cut. The writer details more pregnancies, then names “Boy’s trying to go with me,” “Boy’s I go with,” “Boy’s I like almost mad about,” and “Boy’s I am trying to get.”

  129 There is … propellers WCW’s own copies of the Passaic County Historical Society Bulletin now at Yale include the December 1944 issue, which carried a piece on “the first successfully operated submarine” now resting “in Westside Park, Paterson, N.J.,” designed by John Philip Holland in Paterson in 1881. “His first boat for experimental purposes was tried on the river Passaic and this boat now is … housed in the Museum of the City of Paterson.”

  130 intervenes/supervenes 12th Street (1949)

  sullied/muddied 12th Street

  at the bridge, silent/silent at the bridge 12th Street

  . OParadiso!/to—the history 12th Street

  132 The remains … mourned KH researched and summarized this material for WCW, which he then revised and shortened. In a note to WCW accompanying her summary, now with Yale Za188, KH notes the titles of her sources. The details and some of the language come from: Lydia A. Joc
elyn and Nathan J. Cuffee, Lords of the Soil (Boston, 1905) 1–17; Gabriel Furman, Antiquities of Long Island (Port Washington, L.I., n.d.) 60; Ralph Duvall, The History of Shelter Island (Shelter Island, N.Y., 1932) 14. An earlier version of KH’s notes is filed with the UVA typescripts. The two ellipses in the printed version mark WCW’s cuts of KH’s prose—by a total of thirty-five words.

  133–134 About Merselis … cattle In Nelson 269; the first four words of the passage are WCW’s summary. In Nelson “Merselis” is also spelled “Merseilles.”

  Three of the printed version’s verbal differences from Nelson originate with the apparent transcription, filed with Za188:

  confined/being confined

  that some/lest some

  to say/to say that

  The others occur through the various retypings:

  stare/stare in

  of the whole neighborhood/not only of herself and her family, but of the whole neighborhood

  everybody/everyone

  he was/he was commonly

  the witch/that witch

  would soon be/were soon to be

  exchange/interchange

  wife was/wife had been

  135–136 It was … bank WCW’s prose. “She” is KH, who annotates on the UVA typescripts “Lester Wadsworth told me of this, he was the orchestra leader c. 1930,” and see Weaver 211. In some of the Za188 typescripts the details are in verse. An earlier version identified Wadsworth as the son of Rutherford printer Charlie Wadsworth (see A 6).

  137 A version of the first three lines appears in WCW’s short 1938 poem “At the Bar” (CP1 457), one of a number originally published as “from ‘Paterson,’” and part of his earlier concept of the poem.

  138 The first two-thirds of a letter sent to WCW by Ezra Pound, October 13 [1948], from St. Elizabeths hospital (Yale uncat.). Through September and October WCW and Pound had corresponded on dramatists.

  The line “(re. C.O.E. Panda Panda )” is WCW’s addition. When Pound received Paterson III, Dorothy Pound wrote to WCW, in December 1949: “Ez says many fine things in Paterson iii…. E puzzled about a Panda?” (Yale uncat.). WCW replied, “The Panda Panda, I’m sorry to say, has no meaning—merely a nonsense value in order not to reveal anything that might identify the work in question. I don’t know what put Panda into my head” (December 1949, Lilly Library, Indiana University).

  In a note on the KS typescript WCW instructs “to occupy a full page, as it stands—facing the page following.” The instructions were not followed in NC. WCW incorporated Pound’s reaction to this juxtaposition into Book IV, see p. 182.

  With the posthumous 1963 printing the printed text was altered to bring it closer to the idiosyncratic spelling and spacing of Pound’s original, the original having been deposited at Yale. However the first edition arrangement is in the earliest typescripts, and they indicate that WCW was not concerned to check that the original’s lineation had been reproduced on the page exactly, or that all of Pound’s shorthand had been correctly deciphered. In any case, the spacing in both versions is only an approximation of the original. I have returned to the text as it appeared in the first edition and the NC editions, and record below the verbal differences between the first edition text, the source, and the post-1963 printings:

  got sake/gor Zake (source and 1963)

  exaggerate/egggzaggerate (source and 1963)

  in the source, written above “! !” is “(my xt)” Not in any printed version

  The spacing and punctuation of the following lines in 1963 more closely approximate the source:

  Loeb.—plus Frobenius, plus

  Gesell plus Brooks Adams

  ef you ain’t read him all.—

  Then Golding ‘Ovid’ is in Everyman lib.

  The 1963 version of the last two lines reads:

  just cause it is mentioned eng

  passang. is fraugs….

  Below I give these two lines as they appear in the original, and also what follows in the letter and is omitted from Paterson, although included in the earliest drafts:

  just cause it is mentioned . eng

  then of course there

  passang . is fraugs. hv. yu

  read all the fraugs fr. Willy to

  M. Jean? (want “Crucifixion”

  on loan . ? ? (it aint a ch. service) prob. unobtainable

  here.

  (N.B. Nancy has fergave me & no

  longer thinks I orter be shot fer not

  assassinatin Franco).

  & so on yrz

  Ez

  139 SUBSTRATUM … found here The chart and summary are in Nelson II, although not the title “Substratum.”

  Four entries, some of them duplications, are in Nelson but omitted in the printed version. They are included in the earlier drafts, but missing by the KS typescript.

  540 feet….Soft shale

  565 feet….Soft shale

  613 feet….Soft shale

  1,180 feet….Fine quicksand, reddish

  The omitted material marked by the ellipsis reads: “and the character and amount of the saline impurities giving little hope of success by going deeper.” The Nelson account goes on to describe the analysis of the water’s minerals that was subsequently made.

  Two other verbal differences occur through the retypings:

  the tabular/a tabular

  of Europe/in Europe

  2 x 1 x 1/16 in. I have restored the reading of the original, and of all the typescripts.

  140 American poetry … exist Weaver 211 notes the source, “From a review of a group of American poets by George Barker, ‘Fat Lady at the Circus,’ Poetry (London) 13 (June-July 1948), 39.” See Weaver for further background and a 1966 comment by Barker.

  143–44 When an African … know From Sophie Drinker, Music and Women: The Story of Women in Their Relation to Music (New York, 1948), 11. Drinker’s quoted material slightly misquotes from D. Amaury Talbot, Woman’ s Mysteries of a Primitive People (London, 1915), 208. The ellipsis is Drinker’s.

  Differences from the original, present by the KS typescript:

  slain/killed

  singing songs/singing sad songs

  bough/boughs

  the spirit/his spirit

  fertility/virility

  Until the 1968 fourth printing Ibibio was misspelled Ibidio, probably an error on the galleys, since the spelling is correct on the KS typescript. The error was one listed in Weaver’s 1967 note to James Laughlin (see “A Note on the Text”).

  144 I was thinking … him The speaker is annotated by Thirlwall in his copy of Paterson—Betty Stedman, the recipient of the Musty letter, see pp. 53–54. Her friend, Eleanor Musgrove Britton Mark, was shot by husband Noel Thomas Mark on June 24, 1946, in Metairie, Louisiana. The husband told police he mistook his wife for a prowler.

  Stanley Stedman writes: “Eleanor was my wife’s dearest friend … My wife was certain that he murdered her and was upset and bitter for years. Eleanor was also a patient of Dr. Williams. I feel sure that the paragraph in question is a pretty good rendition of what Elizabeth said to Dr. Williams that day. The reference to Clifford occurred because my wife felt that none of this would have happened if Eleanor had married him. I do remember us sending him some off color jokes” (letter to Christopher MacGowan, December 15, 1990).

  Shortly afterwards WCW wrote his short story “The Farmers’ Daughters,” which centers upon the friendship of the two women, but did not publish it until 1957. See The Farmer? Daughters (1961), 345–374.

  BOOK IV (1951)

  Corydon & Phyllis The two pastoral figures are based, according to WCW’s correspondence and evidence in earlier typescripts, on “a distinguished woman, a prominent figure in the New York and international world, living on Sutton Place with a view such as I describe in the poem” (letter to Marianne Moore, June 23, 1951, Rosenbach Library, printed with omissions in SL 305), whose brother was a financier—Thirlwall annotates as “Ann[e] Morgan” in his copy of SL; and on a nurse originally from Pate
rson whom WCW had known in the late 1920s. The letters in this section are all WCW’s inventions.

  157 than woman Harvard typescript reads “than a woman”

  160 Via?/Chemistry Reads “Via/Chemistry?” in Wake (1950)

  162 happens me/happens to me NC and all subsequent printings. But there is textual evidence that “to” is a deliberate omission. The word is omitted on early typescripts, on one Yale Za189 draft the word is typed in but then typed over as if to be omitted, and it is not on the Harvard typescript. It is on the Dartmouth page proofs, but is then omitted in the first edition.

  163 Voi ch’entrate Dante, Inferno, Canto III, l. 9.

  170 bog/a bog Quarterly Review of Literature (1951)

  170 Norman Douglas … die Weaver notes WCW’s amplification of this story in A 207.

  171 the air … the glow In Quarterly Review of Literature reads “the air above it through the glass room/having taken up the glow”

  171 among/beside Quarterly Review of Literature

  their talk/the talk Quarterly Review of Literature

  171 Curie (the movie queen) MGM’s Madame Curie, starring Greer Garson, was released in 1943.

  171 Billy Sunday Weaver 213 notes the background to the preacher’s 1915 visit to Paterson, and his baseball career.

  172–74 Dear Doctor … A.G. From Allen Ginsberg, March 30, 1950 (Yale uncat.), the first of three Ginsberg letters included in Paterson, see also pp. 193 and 210–211.

  Like many of the prose passages in Paterson, the text of this letter picked up changes, mostly in small details, through the various retypings and editions of the poem. In the posthumous 1963 printing, with the original letter available at Yale, changes were made in the text in the direction of the original. But not all the differences were caught, some regularizing of Ginsberg’s punctuation and use of lower-case spelling departed even further from the original, and in the case of “dig” and “did” a change initiated by WCW was lost. On the grounds outlined in “A Note on the Text” I have returned the text to the version WCW submitted to the printer in the Harvard typescript (although incorporating the 1963 change in the identifying initials), and note below verbal printed variants and verbal differences from the original: