Falls Cameo

Damn. Even though D. W. Griffith filmed his famous ice floe climax of Way Down East in Connecticut, I'm almost certain that this cutaway is the Passaic Falls . . . which makes perfect sense, since for a long time Griffith worked in the industry when it was still in Fort Lee, New Jersey, just down the road from Paterson.

Paterson Datum no. 47

Paterson via San Francisco

Studs Terkel and Nelson Algren cutting up on Paterson

via spsullivanmedia

1014 E 24th St.

This is where David Lyle lived. His method of information-sculpting was one of Williams' main inspirations for Paterson, and I've been told by acquaintances of Lyle that there were boxes and boxes of his "great work" back in the garage. Can someone please just go knock on the door for me, and ask to see if there is anything still in the garage???

Paterson Data 43, 44, 45, 46 (and other varieties)

The Egg Platter
21 Egg Plate Varieties
Hamburgers French Fries Open 10:00pm to 3:00pm

Paterson Pageant!

I've been meaning to do something about this historical curiosity from Paterson for a long while, but then was tempted to just post it as an unsung piece of data (a la Williams), because what else can you do but reflect on the oddness of the event, and the abyss of history that separates us from the idea of a radical political "pageant" that the proletariat would take seriously as a means of action. Indeed, while we usually think of 1968 as one of those rare moments where art was taken seriously as part of political change, here we had a much earlier moment when the New York avant-garde and the strikers of Paterson came together to mount an entirely new form of political "representation." In fact, this experiment in the summer of 1913 would turn the distinction between representation/propaganda and presentation on its head by having the very strikers as actors. As the New York Tribune wrote at the time:

"There was a startling touch of ultra modernity—or rather of futurism—in the Paterson strike pageant in Madison Square Garden. Certainly nothing like it had been known before in the history of labor agitation. The I.W.W. has not been highly regarded hereabouts as an organization endowed with brains or imagination. Yet the very effective appeal to public interest made by the spectacle at the Garden stamps the I.W.W. leaders as agitators of large resources and original talent. Lesser geniuses might have hired a hall and exhibited moving pictures of the Paterson strike. Saturday night’s pageant transported the strike itself bodily to New York. . . ."

Indeed, the spectacle of 1200 workers walking from Paterson to Madison Square Garden to perform challenges the very notion of "spectacle;" we perhaps instead enter the realm of the simulacrum (without the cold video eye, or the potentiality for the anesthetizing rewind).
The one reference to this event happens in Book III of Paterson, an excerpt from a letter to Williams from a friend who had participated in the event: "Rose and I didn't know each other when we both went to the Paterson strike around the first war and worked in the Pagent. She went regularly to feed Jack Reed in jail and I listened to Big Bill Haywood, Gurley Flynn and the rest of the big hearts and helping hands in Union Hall. And look at the damned thing now."
While the last sentence seems to comment upon the loss of energy and "pagentry" [sic] of the I.W.W. or American labor politics in general, there is a comment in the MacGowan footnotes that makes me think that this statement is Williams ventriloquizing. And yes, he is perhaps reflecting ruefully on the failure of labor politics, but maybe also making a meta-comment about his own labor of "page-entry." "And look at the damned thing now" seems to have been a comment this friend made--not ruefully but enthusiastically--when he finally saw how Williams had progressed with Book III.
Some of the many documents on the web about the Paterson Pageant include archival documents collected in an issue of TDR (summer 1971, pp.61-71), a book on the impact of this show on emergent modernism, and a lot more to explore.

Paterson Datum no. 42

Paterson Datum no. 41

Paterson Datum no. 40

GIFin' Paterson

Albert Min sends along his gifonym from his Paternom home.

Return to Paterson

I spent a little time in Paterson last week, while participating in the William Carlos Williams Society's Annual Conference. The talks happened some remove from the chaos of the city in the more bucolic satellite campus of William Paterson College, mostly dead for the summer, although the focus was particularly on the relation of the poem to the city. As hoped, I unearthed some bits of knowledge not easily dislodged from academic books or internet searches. For example, my hunch that the Kevin McCarthy involved with a dramatic reading of Paterson at the Lexington Ave. Y was the Kevin McCarthy of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (thus, through pure hunch setting off the continuing series of Body Snatcher hacks) was given credence since someone pointed out that he was Mary McCarthy's brother, and thus would share her literary circles. I met the almost-allegorically named Dr. Peterson, distinguished for having written the first book-length study of Paterson, and whose collection of Williamsiana includes a manuscript with a mole Williams removed from Floss taped to it. He also had some David Lyle manuscripts and gave me some insight into Lyle's personality. While I couldn't get her to say anything on tape, one scholar mysteriously said something during a question and answer session something to the effect of "Marcia Nardi ruined my career!" So, some juicy bits from long-time travelers in the Patersphere. I took a few of the "greener" critics--including someone writing on ecocrit and Paterson--out to the more off-limits places, where the dead factories seem to have sagged and mulched a little bit more since my last visit. I wonder what will happen to these mysterious and historical abandoned spaces now that the falls area will become a National Park. I almost fear the worst, but hopefully they can get people who are smart about maintaining "preserved ruins" in the spirit of a place like the Eastern State Pen, rather than turn it into a tacky tourist phantasmagoria. Already they have painted the Looms-Warpers-Winders-Quillers-Coppers- Jacquards-&Supplies on the side of the old Paterson Silk Machinery Exchange. Ugh!

10th & A

"Let's get bitchy about a few things, he in effect said. What about this "local," isn't that a little overrated? what about all those things he's supposed to be that he isn't? Oh, I said, local was a word he used to explain why Poe wrote horror stories that took place in horror-story land. Long stupid exchange about the local. Like, The most local thing about a person is their body I said, for some it's their brain he said, etc." --Alice Notley, "Dr. Williams' Heiresses"

Yesterday, I recorded a PoemTalk about Notley's "I The People," along with Al Filreis, Erica Kaufman and Zack Pieper, in which we had a long, hopefully not stupid exchange about things such as the locality (or ideality) of her 10th & A. You can decide whether it turned out "fast, perky, sassy, talky" when it comes out in the fall. But in the meantime, Google Earth gives us the most likely vision Notley had of this corner:







































In the spirit of the local, tomorrow begins the William Carlos Williams Society's Conference Paterson: The Province of the Poem.

Paterson Datum no. 39

Barack and the River!

Obama's first national park designation is














Maybe this spring it's time for Silliman to reread Paterson instead!

Hell Must Be Peopled (1859)

Brimstony! . . .

Campbell, Alfred Gibbs
"INVITATION TO THE CLERGY TO PARTICIPATE IN THE INAUGURATION OF THE TAVERN AT PASSAIC FALLS, N. J."

Ho ! preachers of His Gospel who
Salvation came to bring,
Rest from your labors for awhile,
And join our gathering!

Ye servants of the Living God!
Your fealty cast aside,
And with us for a single day
Stand on the Devil's side!

What boots it that we open wide
Another door to woe,
Through which a still increasing tide
Of human souls shall flow?

Hell must be peopled; and our plan
Is quite the surest one;
Our railway's a descending grade,
Our cars the swiftest run.

Not faster do the waters plunge
Adown Passaic's steep,
Not swifter do the lightnings fly
Athwart the vaulted deep,

Than our good train, when once she starts,
With freight of priceless souls,
Speeds to the pit where, deep and dark,
Perdition's Ocean rolls.

Then come with us and view the train;
The depot consecrate;
Where God's voice in the cataract speaks,
Rum's reign inaugurate!

Ho! servants of the Living God!
Your fealty cast aside,
And with us, for a single day,
Stand on the Devil's side!

1859.

Testing My Pipes

Data floodgates opened onto the real thing!

Paterson Data nos. 37 & 38

Paterson Datum no. 34

Paterson Datum no. 33

Paterson Data nos. 31a and b