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William Carlos WilliamsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In Book 1, which was originally published as a separate volume in 1946, William Carlos Williams introduces the main characters and themes which will recur throughout the rest of the text. The eponymous Paterson is the name both of a man and of a city in New Jersey, and throughout this section Williams draws connections between them: “the city / the man, an identity—it can’t be / otherwise—an / interpenetration, both ways” (3). Book 1 uses evocative imagery to create these connections, especially imagery of the body as landscape. Passaic Falls is introduced as the headwaters whose torrent creates a river that can be dangerous.
This section is collaged with verse poetry, letters, and stories about the inhabitants of Paterson throughout time; notably a poor shoemaker who discovers pearls in mussels, a man with an unusually long forehead visited by General Washington of the Revolutionary Army, a group of boys catching an enormous fish, the history of a mixed-race region called New Barbadoes Neck. Williams tells the story of Mrs. Sarah Cummings, who falls into the river below Passaic Falls and drowns. Next, he describes Sam Patch, a townsperson with substance use disorder who jumps into the falls as the town tries to raise a bridge to span the gap and later drowns jumping into Niagara Falls.
By William Carlos Williams
Approach of Winter
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Between Walls
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In the American Grain
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Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
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Spring and All
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Spring Storm
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The Red Wheelbarrow
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The Young Housewife
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This Is Just to Say
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To Elsie
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To Waken An Old Lady
William Carlos Williams