Paterson

Book 2 opens with Paterson climbing a hill in a park on a Sunday afternoon. He takes note of the limbs of the people, such as the “ugly legs of the young girls” and “men’s arms, red, used to heat and cold” (44) and of the rocky cliffs around him as he walks through forest composed of cedars and sumac. He pays special attention to natural features as part of a body and to the bodies of others around him. Just as in Book 1, brief sections follow one after another: A letter-writer becomes indignant at a lack of prior reply from the recipient, and collaged sections from the letter are interspersed throughout the rest of the Book. In 1880, singing societies from the town of Paterson were involved in a fatal altercation on a farmer’s property: The farmer, indignant about trespassing, shot one of the singers. This collaged section of the narrative is interrupted by verse lines about nesting birds.

Paterson leaves the path and walks into a field barefoot, where he struggles against the landscape. He scares birds which seem created from the earth itself. He sees a grasshopper the length of his boot and lets his mind wander to connect images of the grasshopper, love, light, and a stone he sees in the field. The letter-writer continues in frustration about being ignored by the letter’s recipient; they claim that being ignored has destroyed their sense of self. In a historical interlude set in 1878, two police officers fail at removing a mink from the premises of a hardware store. They attempt to hit it, then one takes out a pistol and tries to shoot it, but it runs away and hides in the basement of a nearby saloon.

Paterson continues walking and sees a couple sunbathing and picnicking behind a bush as a group of girls walks through the park. He sees a man combing a collie dog and sexualizes the prominence of an observation tower in the distance. A letter-writer admits to the recipient that they let the recipient’s dog become pregnant when they were hanging up laundry at the recipient’s house, and they inform the recipient that the dog is set to have puppies.

Paterson views the landscape of the park in its entirety; he gazes upon a distant church and ballfield. Picnickers gather and shout while other parkgoers summit a stony mountain. At the summit of the mountain, groups of hikers play music and dance. The narrator is reminded of an Eisenstein film which featured Priapus, a Greek god of fertility. From up above, Paterson voyeuristically gazes down again at the couple being intimate on the field below: The man sleeps as the woman plays with his suspenders. Paterson imagines the river below Passaic Falls as part of the man’s sleep, and he imagines the New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Edward Faitoute Condict Young in a scene with the sleeping lovers. Paterson continues walking through the park and passes a group of people playing instruments as well as a Christian preacher.

The preacher’s narrative about getting rid of all of his money is interspersed with a digression about the Founding Fathers’ internal struggles regarding the new Republic’s national debt and the Federal Reserve System. The preacher describes how he prayed to the Christian God and was told to give away his money with the promise that God would make him “the richest man in the world!” (70). The preacher throws his money to the wind. Paterson describes how Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers, was sufficiently impressed by Passaic Falls as to want to build a nationalized system of manufacturers there. The tone of the interspersed sections falls squarely anti-Federal Reserve. A letter-writer wants the recipient to look at poems and discusses a strong desire to see the recipient in person, and then abstract imagery of memory, love, and spring leads into concrete imagery of the park at night. In the park, Paterson gets cold and considers Passaic Falls alongside an unnamed man and woman who are in a difficult relationship.

The amateur poet Cress writes a long letter to Dr. Paterson, named as Dr. P. She starts out angry at the way her attitudes toward women are perceived as acceptable in literature but unacceptable interpersonally; she bemoans her difficulty finding employment related to writing and discusses what she perceives as blocks toward professional writing success. She discusses her financial difficulties. The letter-writer argues that who she is in writing is her true self, and she says that the type of friendship she needed from the Dr. P was not what he offered.