Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 191-92

* This poem is the second in a series dealing with the Haitian President of Williams' text. The first part can be read HERE.

Women to the Haitian President, upon Gathering at Dusk near Point Croix

We
who have been your lovers
have talked this through:

Yes,
our beauty is collective.
It is spun
from the sameness of our contours,
it is outlined
in black, gathered
and flocking against
the background of our dusk,
where we have been threaded
over that losing light,
crossed and woven
in darkest silhouette
upon the loom;

and Yes,
the shape of breasts we know
are enough, more than -
doubled and doubling
the smaller joy of your
heart,
so much of us
in pairs
you'd say;

we say
your conclusions could only be
reached this way:
multiplicitly.

But Man,
who loved us each
divided, parts of
a whole seen so
distantly,
great God, what you did not know
in this shadowed shape,
What!

Our eyes;
twinned depths
of night, suns each
setting on waters paired
and equally bottomless.

Dearest man,
I say,
as I, as
I, as
I, as
I:
what love,
love, love,
for this beauty
has been lost?

KMC 11-8-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 188-189

Virtue and the Death of the Grandmother

I.

What is your virtue and
what has it become?

A process.
A bird.
Stout, with stringy flesh,
tough, peppered skin.

Oh do no,
do not eat that turkey--
she's barely cold.

What are we doing here?

Our lives,
because we are not the one dead
will go on, but not now no not now no.
Amuse her! Amuse him!

She is my muse and I refuse to go on.

II.

Not now no not now no.
_____________________"But yes. The past is for those like me, though not quite
_____________________cold, cold I will be. And soon."
No not now no not now no!
_____________________"Your virtue, stout as it is, must grow stouter, must become _____________________more. Continue becoming. Go on."
Be coming and going?
_____________________"Yes. I am growing colder and you are growing stouter
_____________________and fatter. Do not limp."
Oh do not, I can not, oh what not can I say, oh how to end the awful wait?
_____________________"The wait will be light. It is the dark that will not be. It is
_____________________the now that I have that you will lament. Go. Become."
Become? Become? Not now! My God, my God why has thou--"
_____________________"Do not quote. Become. Go. Go on. You will find yourself
_____________________stout if you move. Go become."
But what of you?
_____________________"My self stiffens and grows colder. Come now, be going."
But what of becoming?
_____________________"Be coming and going."

gbs 11-6-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 193

Another Letter from A.G.

Dear Doctor:

I'm writing to you because you
have forgotten something
{break}
I found it, walking the streets
nearest the River today
{break}
Do you know the Bourse,
Doctor? Of course
{break}
You know your town
as if it were you, sir -
{break}
that is to say:
anatomically

{break}

But that sound that reaches
from the Manufactory
{break}
all the way down the channels
of streets to the very City Square
{break}
Dear God, the River, and the
sound of it
{break}
I wonder if you have grown used
to that which does not howl
{break}
as the Falls here
are wont to

{break}

I found the pubs, you know
the ones: off Mill and River Sts.
{break}
Godwin's is the place I
most move about these days
{break}
Quiet, as I'm sure
you know it is quiet, but
{break}
This past Wednesday, as
I walked the Bourse to
{break}
Mill, I saw a man
drunk and hanging out
{break}
over a balcony, tip-
ping in a chair, al-
{break}
most falling as the reek-
ing smell of propane
{break}
leaking from a pipe or
stove somewhere in-
{break}
side his house seeped
out from the cracks and the
{break}
drains of the place, flow-
ing down the narrows
{break}
of the alley, reach-
ing out to me and pour-
{break}
ing into me until I could
taste it, on the back
{break}
of my throat, thick but
sweet almond-gas swill
{break}
of it, ah, even as
I moved on and past
{break}
down the street
to my home

{break}

Watching this man sway,
Doctor,
{break}
I thought of you, of
what I found that was once
{break}
yours. But the water is
running, Doctor, and I'm off
{break}
to find what you found
in it at the start.
{break}
I hope this letter finds you well,
Doctor. What you lost is not
{break}
enclosed. But you will find it
if you run.

A.G.

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 190-92

The Haitian President to His Women, on the Sight of Swallows Flocking in the Waters off Fort Dauphin

Quite often from my house, I see swallows
moving in a wide sweep over the harbor
as one, the denseness of them somehow
flat and twisting as a loose ribbon or
flag might, if wrested from its mooring and
blown haphazardly in rough gusts of wind.
It is the sameness of motion that most
delights me; the hundred bodies turning
in tight unison, wrapping around ghosts
of invisible up-drafts now churning
in the late day heat of the western shore -
and with them, a lone thought rises, and sings:
my beauty is in this rushing chorus,
this doubled beating of separate wings.

KMC 10-24-06

Here are My Keys, Go Up and Help Yourself

Without further ado, we present the third song-offering for the Paterson Project: "The Incomplete Seduction of a Scholar and Clerk; or, 'Here are My Keys, Go Up and Help Yourself." As before, you can access the poem page HERE and the song file HERE. This one has a few ch-ch-ch-changes, so check 'em both out and see what you think.

Oh, and then tell us what you think. All you silent site-checkers are makin' me nervous...

Song 2: The Murder of the Dutchman

The second rough cut of a Paterson Project song is now up on the "Murder of the Dutchman Jonafen Haring" page. For those about to rock: we salute you.

Click HERE to go straight to the audio file.

In related news, we will be posting "lyrics" and (what do you think, LaValle?) possibly music for these songs soon. We will also put up any revisions to songs in the same manner that we post revisions to poems: erase the first one and give you the one that's totally better. So, if any of this changes, you will be the first to know. As for now, enjoy another entry in the Project's second wave - I have to say, I think this one is niiice.

How many extra vowels can you put in your response?

A Note on Translation; or, Striking Up A Chord

The Paterson Project is extremely proud to announce the first entry into the second phase of this enterprise:

Contributor Gaston LaValle has started working on translating the poems Conversely and I have been putting together here on the site into lyrical - and, in due course, musical - form. And we've got the first batch of initial recordings in stock. The first song going up is LaValle's quite-faithful rendition of "The Skeleton of Peter the Dwarf." The link below will get you straight to the sound file, but if you want the poetry at your fingertips as you take it all in, please go to the poem's existing page and link to the Internet Archive (who is hosting our music so graciously) from there.

Two more songs should be up by tomorrow, and after that, it will be up to you guys to keep this thing rolling - not unlike a mythical fairy, LaValle needs the sounds of your hands clapping to keep his light shining - so let's all go hit up the message board!

THE LINK: "The Skeleton of Peter the Dwarf"

This is an ecstatic T. Azimuth signing off - you all take care of yourselves.

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 197

The Murder of John S. Van Winkle and his Wife by a Robber in the Winter of 1850

He stole through the snow,
he stole in the night,
noiseless wheels crunching.
Walking wheels--walking, so
circular, a sine wave rolling
endlessly step after step--noiselessly
wheeling footsteps
toward an old housewife,
her husband, his house. There
to rob, with a chop, to end
Van Winkle's sleep with
a hatchet--a hatchet!--in a
sternum sounding

--curiously--

like a hatchet in a tree.

The Van Winkles awake, spill
and he steals back home
considering his wares as fallen
leaves.

gbs 10-16-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 186

The Language as Virgin Purpose; or, Illumination

"Begin
at the beginning,
Brother."

This cry rings out across the
hot wood-pew place of this
summer Sunday, this
Amen! this
Glory! this
Hallelujah!

And with these most lowly
I am,
all these words in my
ears holding a perfect purpose
at tongue's long distance
from me.

Where are Your most-golden trumpets, Lord?
I ask; the angels gathered in the sky?
The fish in great numbers, the day in midst of night?

Where, in
this sun-white place,
this house of hollow voices,
am I?

And in a whisper
of leaved branches
against the nearest wall:

the words are why we're here.

---

Speak, oh God,
speak --
form me
in the roll of your tongue,
in the sounding of me
out;
stirred from dissonance
to being,
spoken,
spoken from and
for.

---

Here,
here in the filth of
this house, Father,
boards cracking long down the walls,
floors scarred and rubbed smooth
with a thousand feet
and knees
worn,
find me,
and hear:

the light is going down outside this
old building;
the sun is nearing the horizon
and the white
clapboard white
of this body will glow,
gold and yellow,
in the last light --
for a moment,
a long moment.

We do not light it.

Tell me I'm clean,
and I will be clean.
Tell me I'm clean,
and I will be clean.
Tell me I'm clean,
and I will be clean --
Hosanna.

KMC 10-11-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 197-198

"What have I done?" A Claim and Question

What have I
done?

Indeed, what have
you done?

What have
__________I
_________________done?

Indeed, what have
you done?

What
_____have I
Indeed, ___________done?
what have you done?

What
_____have
Indeed, _____I done?
what have you done?

What
Indeed, have
what have you done? I done?

What,
in deed, have
what have you done? I
_________________done?

gbs 10-08-06

Paterson: Book One, Chapter I, p. 15-16 and Jane Eyre, second to last page (unless you have a copy with really large or really small print).

Dear Reader[s],

So, due to several questions from readers (only one of which has had the nerve to respond to us on the blog, unafraid to face us even if we're bad poets and you're embarrased to tell us), we have clarifications on our modus operandi. Actually, it's more of a complete restatement than a clarification. We're taking chapter three of Paterson IV and using the themes/language of the poem as a springboard for our poems. They occassionally contain direct quotations (which we will continue to leave unattributed). They more often contain gross exaggerations of thematic material. We often have little or no evidence from Paterson for our characters' characterizations. We just make that up. Sometimes plot elements are also invented. In fact, every time, thus far. Fairly often we'll reference other poets and pop culture icons like Bob Barker. The titles of the posts serve as a kind of work cited page; we like that better than using the titles of the poems because we do not believe we're being original enough to call the poems' titles official blog titles. Also, it's how we started and we really dig uniformity.

All will continue unapologectically because some things can be done as well as others.

With apologies,

Schwitters and Conversely

P.S. We just discovered that we were doing the same thing. One of us wrote an explanation--a "What We're Up To"--in the sidebar. The other of us did it right here. We're leaving both because, as you can see, some things can be done as well as others.

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 187

A song is now available for this poem on the Internet Archive!

The Incomplete Seduction of a Scholar and Clerk; or, "Here's My Key, Go Up and Help Yourself."

I.
Thank Jesus you're sleeping
at last in the dark.
I know it from the sigh that
escapes-
in each odd breath,

While too quickly I move
from the still-made covers,
and do not dress as I
switch on
the lamp near the wall.

In -light- the room's read:
books in each corner,
on each table and each
chair, all
bound thick in cold leather.

II.
And in light, you will open
as blank pages do open,
and the white of your back
will part and then fold -
along the ridge of your spine
still shadowed in night:
two thin pages facing
two thin pages facing

---

III.
My finger is tracing
the lines of your shoulder,
reading your skin
as it
might letters in Braille;

Moving above the
slight rise of your lungs
across ribs even-spaced,
stan-
zas unspoken, I--

Break the rough still-
ness of night in the room
with my own sound of
air mov-
ing thin from my lips-

And I will not tell you
Not ever tell you
Not ever tell you
it was not with the [sound of trumpets],

but a whimper.

KMC 9-27-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 198-199

The River Facing the Sea

October 10, 1950,
Thalassa pleas nostalgically:
"Here I am, where you are to run!
"This, each of my rivers has done!"

But if to her the river goes,
if to her fresh water flows,
what will become, what will be left?
of a river complicit in its own theft?

The sea is not the river's home;
never to be aqua seafoam.
She will snap and chew, tear and spit,
dying the waters, a sunrise lit.

It moans, beckons, Thalassa calls:
"Here you can sleep, Passaic falls!
"Here you will grow, bearing my seeds."
But the river arrives, and bleeds.

Fresh to brackish and this to salt
a man scoops, drinks, and from it balks.
Turning and looking toward the town
he sees the falls in a white gown.

The Passaic runs, moves but stays,
the Passaic running, moving but staying,
the Passaic ran, moved but stayed,
the Passaic runs, moves, and stays.

gbs 9-26-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 196

The Circus and the Play of Candle Light

the whistle blows,
closing down the mill
of the National Manufactory
as I listen - hard -
for the cracking sound
of my father's boots
on the stones outside our house -

walking heavy down
Ison,
swallowed in the broom-
sweep sound of the Falls

and it's the third night
of the the wide, striped tent
set up on Main
for passing circus clowns,
their
thin horses
waiting outside on Market -

hitched in a circle
to a post,
shoulders huddled
in the darkness.

The tent flap is closed
as we walk by it outside,
passing near the top hat man
four feet tall, standing on
a deep red box,
waving my father
to pay him -

ten cents for
us both,
eight for a man
on his own

and the seams (the seams)
are glowing in the candle light
and shadows
roam, from face to face
and through the cracks in my fingers

and men inside are walking
with legs eight feet high
and taking turns
tossing three yellow torches,
crackling with the sound of their burning -

with the sound of their burning.

KMC 9-25-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 192 (with reference back to Book One, Part I, p. 10) [Draft 2]

A song is now available for this poem on the Internet Archive!

The Skeleton of Peter the Dwarf

It's hard to be a hydrocephalic.
54 inches, head to toe.
(27 from my chin to scalp alone;
that makes me a marvel.)

Washington came to see me
(the man, not the city; or, maybe, the city is the man).
He looked at me, marveled at me;
I answered with inactivity.

I floated along, day to day,
endlessly rocking,
loving Jesus and preacher's conversation,
swelling with pride at the show I could provide.

It was hard for me to move,
my head being so huge,
but I got by without going out;
keeping to the cerebral.

My head's got its own box now,
it's lost all its water!
And now they say my skull is a marvel!
but they say nothing of the parts of me everyone's had.

What I never told in my time
was that, more than theology or phrenology,
all I ever wanted out of life
was to not shit in my cradle.

A tiny outhouse with plenty of headroom,
straps to hold me up and a stand
from which I could read
my Bible or a dirty magazine.

Oh that would be marvelous.
"A marvel indeed," they would say,
as they tied me in and
sang of my tenacity.

gbs 9-22-06, revised 9-25-06 with kmc

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 193-197

The Forgotten Paterson: A Tavern Song

Do you know
the Bourse?
to the west, go west, go west
Or the slow curve
of River
as the town moves back
from the Falls?

It's the haggle of the Hall,
the Bourse, on City, on West
that lends its name at interest,
to all who give it interest.

And interest is in the hollows,
the alleys cutting through;
a man out overhanging
Washington's thick
weatherboard sign:

This is Godwin's Taproom!
House Ten of Ten of Town!
Let the General INN! (bartender)
As Spirits Might Soothe Hys Thurst!

There are negroes in the dark
(do you see them?)
There are gypsies in the dark
(do you see them?)
There is Paterson on these streets
(oh, oldest man!)
There is a serpent not sleeping,
but coiling tightly
in this almond-gas swill
(Oh, Great God!)

From Park, from
Goffle, from
Boudinot, in oh;
From Collet,
Carrick, from Roswell
Colt;
From Dublin, New Dublin,
New
Dublin Spring, oh
Irish wave and wave:

The work-bell is ringing out --

Do you know this part?
Do you know this part?

KMC 9-23-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 192 (with reference back to Book One, Part I, p. 10)

The Skeleton of Peter the Dwarf

It's hard to be a hydrocephalic.
54 inches, head to toe.
(27 from my chin to scalp alone;
that makes me a marvel.)

Washington came to see me
(the man, not the city; or, maybe, the city is the man).
He looked at me, marveled at me;
inactivity was my answer.

I floated along, day to day,
endlessly rocking,
loving Jesus and preacher's conversation,
swelling with pride at the show I could provide.

It was hard for me to move,
my head being so huge,
but I got by without going out;
keeping to the cerebral.

My head's got its own box now,
it's lost all its water!
So now they say, "That skull is a marvel!"
never about the parts of me everyone's had.

What I never told in my time
was that, more than theology or phrenology,
all I ever wanted out of life
was to not shit in my cradle.

A tiny outhouse with plenty of headroom,
straps to hold me up and a stand
from which I could read
my Bible or a dirty magazine.

Now they've ripped me apart,
half in one box, half elsewhere.
So now, if bowels move in death,
I'll never know this simple joy.

gbs 9-22-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 186-7

A song is now available for this poem on the Internet Archive!

The Murder of the Dutchman Jonafen Haring

Something's in
with the horses.
I hear it,
rising up
from dawn.

You will look
As you always look.

The sound of you
on cold steps
down and across
and so briefly in snow;
crunch, I listen
I listen
for you.

And then the
beating of hooves
the beating
of hooves
the beat-
ing of
hooves
on stone.
-------
Through the silence
of strangers
and torches
(four tories,
their judas)

past the entry
of my house
to horses
in darkness
away;

through waiting
on footsteps
in the hall,

a cold thought
will penetrate:

there is no virgin
beginning.

KMC 9-22-06

THE LISTING

So, here's the list of titles with which we're starting. I mentioned this at ulmlls, but if you're coming here blind the sources of these titles was Schwitters's presentation on this book of Paterson. He used these titles as notes to talk about part three. We're very much aware of their Sufjan Stevens-ness, thank you. By the way, the Paterson text we're using is the New Directions paperback, first published in 1995, I think. It's got the sepia-tone photo of the Passaic falls on the front, if you're looking for it.

Here they are:

The Language as a Virgin Purpose

The Murder of the Dutchman Jonafen Haring

The Incomplete Seduction of a Scholar and Clerk; or, "Here's My Key, Go Up and Help Yourself."

Virtue and the Death of the Grandmother

The Difficulties of Holding All Together in the Mind

The Haitian President / His Women

The Skeleton of Peter the Dwarf & [Draft 2]

The Memory of the River

Another Letter from A.G.

The Forgotten Paterson: A Tavern Song

Fred Goodell Jr. and the Murder of His Daughter (Culminating in Her Burial on Garrett Mountain)

The Circus and the Play of Candle Light

The Murder of John S. Van Winkle and His Wife by a Robber in the Winter of 1850

“What Have I Done?” A Claim and Question

The River Facing the Sea

The Man Facing Death

Seeds, or Ideas Spilled by the River Into the Sea

The Bitch and the Man from the Sea

The Trial, Conviction, and Execution of the Murderer John Johnson

The End (Oh, Passaic)

Ars Poetica

This blog represents a collaborative effort between its two authors to write, develop and (in its way) publish a collection of songs and poems derived in inspiration from the third chapter of the fourth book of William Carlos Williams' Paterson. The songs will be written by the following method:

- The Chapter will be read and studied in detail.
- The Chapter will be divided into narrative and thematic movements.
- These movements will be titled.
- Poems will be written from these titles; the connection between the resulting poems and the original text may be tangential, at best.
- These poems will be linked with music; at this point, more changes may, of course, occur.
- Songs will, then, be songs.

The larger purpose of the blog will be to share this work with any interested parties, with feedback welcomed. There is no hope of material gain with this project - it is purely for what the kids call "kicks." What do you think we are? Millionaires?