William Carlos Williams's Paterson

It seems ironic that William Carlos Williams's Paterson includes the line "It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written." After all, some would argue that Paterson itself exhibits this "dangerous" flaw. And yet he provides an effective comeback a few lines later when he instructs the reader to "write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive." Williams therefore makes a careful distinction between careless writing and bad writing. The suggestive but not quite explanatory difference is that careless writing is "green," evoking flora, growth, spring, vigor, and so on.

The question we must ask about Williams is what subject matter and which poetic techniques most frequently ensure we achieve the necessary "greenness." In Paterson the question of subject matter is a deceptively difficult one. Williams is well known for presenting the sensible world to the reader. That is, abstractions don't suffice for Williams; one must work through the objects of the world. His subject matter in this text is the city of Paterson. He takes a Whitmanesque approach, gathering tangible people, objects, actions, and language to construct his complex and variegated city.

And yet it is not as simple as Williams bringing Paterson to the reader. Paterson is a city figured as a human being:

Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls
its spent waters forming the outline of his back. He
lies on his right side, head near the thunder
of the waters filling his dreams! Eternally asleep,
his dreams walk about the city where he persists
incognito. (Paterson I.I)

I think it's very important that Williams makes this metaphor: city as man. This relation says something about each term; each is implicated in the other. For instance, the city has dreams that begin in water and continue as people who walk about the city. Conversely, people are filled with the landmarks of the city:

something
has brought him back to his own
mind .
in which falls unseen
tumbles and rights itself
and refalls - and does not cease, falling
and refalling with a roar, a reverberation
not of the falls but of its rumor
unabated (Paterson III.I)

The natural world flows through the individual as a "rumor" or a "reverberation." The river, with its persistent movement and unceasing roar, represents desire. It is a perpetual source of energy that moves through the subject as well as the city:

Beautiful thing,
my dove, unable and all who are windblown,
touched by the fire
and unable,
a roar that (soundless) drowns the sense
with its reiteration
unwilling to lie in its bed
and sleep and sleep, sleep
in its dark bed. (Paterson III.I)

This passage recognizes the act of repression, forcing the roar of the river to "its dark bed" like a hidden unconscious. Williams's particularly astute observation is that the reverberation is not caused by the falls, but by its "rumor." The river-as-the-unconscious is only understood through the distortions required of it to become conscious.

But if I could pick up on Williams's complex metaphor, I see a sort of shortcoming in the poem. Williams too often accepts anything the river brings to him. That is, using an early notion of Freud's, the unconscious is simply the place where things rest (or percolate) that are not currently in the conscious mind. There is much that is ordinary or mundane in the unconscious. But because it is part of the flux of the river, Williams considers everything important. All of this is a round-about way of saying that Williams includes too much. His attempt to grasp everything tangible leads to a collection of objects of varying quality and intensity. He would have been better to be more selective in his material and more intent in discovering language's ability to pick up on the "rumor" of desire.

William Carlos Williams, Objects, and Associations

It seems to me there's too much emphasis on Williams as an "objective" poet. That is, he does more than simply present objects. His famous dictum "no ideas but in things" has been taken too far. He doesn't discount ideas entirely in favor of things "in themselves." Instead, he stresses the value of ideas, but he wants to understand them through things. In his 1923 text Spring and All, he is at great pains to define and promote the imagination. His biggest targets are "association" and "symbolism," but surprisingly, he ultimately appears to end up arguing for a position that requires sharpened versions of these two processes.

Association is a function that surrounds "vague words." In one of the book's prose sections, Williams uses the example of the sky to discuss how some art fails to give the reader access to the sky:

"The man of imagination who turns to art for release and fulfilment of his baby promises contends with the sky through layers of demoded words and shapes. Demoded, not because the essential vitality which begot them is laid waste [...] but because meanings have been lost through laziness or changes in the form of existence which have let words empty" (100).

This argument seems akin to Pound's complaint about a line like "dim lands of peace." Pound deplores the addition of "of peace" as a vague and limp abstraction. Williams would probably add that "dim lands" is itself a weak construction because such a construction may have an automated response; the line does not sufficiently bring the landscape before the reader. The words are empty, relying on symbolism to move away from the land to a verbal abstraction rather than a description that would move into the land.

But here's where I think it's also important to note that Williams doesn't want to move into the land simply to present a landscape. His notion of the imagination derives from the idea that associations should flow from the encounter with what is presented as directly as possible. He doesn't despise associations; he requires that they be earned honestly, i.e. by traveling into the object rather than trusting a habituated move away from the object.

Whether or not he is able to do this in his own poetry is up for debate. A first obvious question is why he needs to add the prose sections to Spring and All; can't the practice of his poetic technique accomplish his goals without a host of critical statements smattered throughout? Does the poetry accomplish the laudable task of revitalizing the world and generating man's imagination?

Um...sometimes. I think he successfully avoids the "crude symbolism" that associates "anger with lightning, flowers with love," but it seems he sometimes fails to apprehend the emotional vitality available in the objects of the world. Unfortunately, I'm going to argue that one of his most well-known poems fails in this task: his famous red wheel barrow does little to fill the words again.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

The objects may be brought more fully in front of the reader, but I find its ability to evoke emotion questionable. It's likely this poem has been talked about so much by critics simply because it presents an intellectual challenge to see how this material might be bent in a certain direction. In this sense, it's a fun puzzle piece, but it engenders the pleasure of the critic and not the reader.

By contrast, the poem beginning with the following stanza more nearly accomplishes Williams's poetic task:

The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air - The edge
cuts without cutting
meets - nothing - renews
itself in metal or porcelain -

Very bluntly, the rose is refused its usual associations; it cannot be simply a marker for love. Instead of trusting that traditional movement of associations, Williams takes a closer look at the object. He notes how the petals come to an end in an edge, marking the boundary between the object and its environment. But the rose, and more specifically the petals, are continued in the reflection of the metal or porcelain vase holding the flowers. Although the petals end, making the rose an object made discrete by its boundaries, they paradoxically transcend their boundaries. The rose is understood in terms of movement rather than stasis.

I would argue that, in fashioning a new way in which the rose might be understood, Williams is also contemplating a new way in which the rose might articulate with human emotions. The poem works against typical associations, but it can only do so in the context of those associations. Although Williams insists that the rose is obsolete, he knows he's working against the backdrop of received ideas. In other words, Williams does not proceed as if the rose is obsolete as a metaphor for love; he revitalizes the metaphor by discovering a new basis for it. He states:

The rose carried the weight of love
but love is at an end - of roses

If is at the edge of the
petal that love waits

In the first couplet, the rose has been a symbol for love, but as the flower ends, so does love. The diction of the second couplet is complicated, but my reading is that "If" is at the edge of the petal. The fact of ending and the need to pick up the continuation in the reflection creates this conditional situation, requiring a new way of perceiving the flower in its environment. The potential of such an imaginative response in the reader reintroduces the possibility of love. For Williams, the flower is not a metaphor for love; the "if" of imagination is a metaphor for love.