Paterson (poem)

Paterson (poem)

Paterson is a poem by influential modern American poet William Carlos Williams.

The poem is composed of five books and a fragment of a sixth book. The five books of Paterson were published separately in 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951, and 1958, and the entire work was published as a unit in 1963. This book is considered to be Williams' epic. Williams' book In the American Grain is claimed to be Paterson's abstracted introduction involving a rewritten American history. It is a poetic monument to, and personification of, the city of Paterson, New Jersey. One of the least opaque themes of the poem centers on the process of industrialization and its effects. But Randall Jarrell opines that "the subject of Paterson is: How can you tell the truth about things?--that is, how can you find a language so close to the world that the world can be represented and understood in it?" One notable phrase that echoes this theme and is repeated throughout the poem is, "No ideas but in things."