Abstract
Williams apparently intended the original Paterson as a unity. A major difficulty in so accepting it is the way in which the poetess’s letter monopolizes at length the end of Paterson II. Many critics (Randall Jarrell and Marianne Moore among them) have found each successive book less satisfactory than its predecessor. Some of these critics perceive in Paterson V a lifting of the poem, but even Williams himself was forced to see, with its publication, that for a poem like Paterson, ‘there can be no end to such a story’ (P, 7) in the terms he had laid down for himself in Books I–IV. As this statement shows, he saw a qualitative difference between Book V and the earlier books.
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Notes
James J. Rorimer, The Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloisters (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 4th edn, rev., 1962 ).
Louis L. Martz, The Poem of the Mind: Essays on Poetry English and American ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1966 ) p. 156.
Philippe Soupault, Les Dernières Nuits de Paris, translated by William Carlos Williams as The Last Nights of Paris, with an introduction by Matthew Josephson ( New York: Macaulay, 1929 ).
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© 1982 Charles Doyle
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Doyle, C. (1982). Paterson V . In: William Carlos Williams and the American Poem. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16839-2_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16839-2_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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