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Rediscovering William Carlos Williams’s Paterson: why it still matters

William Carlos Williams’s Paterson was published as a series of four books in the years immediately following World War II (1946–1951), with a fifth book added to complete the series several years later (1958). The poem interweaves different narratives in a collage of “life stories” centered in the world of the present but recalling the historical past of the United States (Sam Patch, Alexander Hamilton); the worlds of science and medicine (Marie Curie); lives of visual artists (Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Peter Breughel); and ancient and contemporary writers (Sappho, Allen Ginsberg). What is the significance of these stories clustered around a place, reflecting on and refracting through each other, “a song / of a man and a woman: the riddle of a man / and a woman”? What do they have to teach us? We will read each of the five books and the author’s retrospective comments on the poem (preferably in the edition prepared by Christopher MacGowan, 1992–1995) to explore its significance, humor, and insight. Second-hand copies are readily available.

Instructor Stephen Hahn is professor of English, emeritus, at William Paterson University. He serves on the executive council of the William Carlos Williams Society and is a member of the editorial advisory board of the William Carlos Williams Review. Teaching next door to Paterson, NJ, for nearly 40 years, Steve explored the geographical, historical, and biographical background of Williams’s long poem “on the ground” and in the tradition of American “epic” poems (such as Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Hart Crane’s The Bridge.) He was a consultant and participant in the BBC Radio-North docudrama “A Traveler’s Guide to Paterson” (2015) written by Michael Symons Roberts, and was the co-editor of a volume commemorating the 225th anniversary of Paterson, titled Paterson Lives (2017). He has taught several courses at CSC.