Rolling Up the Sum

As Peggy Lee would say, "Is that all there is?" Poet Zack Pieper, who hopefully is still planning to record a Patersong for me, sent me this Williams poem of his, which seems to sum up the critical reception of the man in two concise tercets:

GRAFFITI:

No idea
BUT
in things i.e.

Dr. Williams
was a
"hornball"

Paterson Data nos. 31a and b

Secret Shrine

If you go to Paterson, you may now happen upon a secret shrine to William Carlos Williams' poem. Although, it might not be there anymore. Composed of trash the Education Department leaves in the abandoned Hinchliffe Stadium (e.g. busted file cabinets, waterlogged textbooks, wobbly bookcarts), the shrine is itself subject to the vagaries of what constitutes trash and what art . . . and what, for that matter, desirable furniture. After the first day, the "library" aspect of the shrine--a small bench facing a bookshelf under a tree sprouting from the concrete and stocked with English textbooks and xeroxes of Paterson in baggies--was disrupted when someone must have realized that the bookshelf was indeed still a good book shelf, and took it away (even though it may have been there for years.) It must have been a critic, because they also let their dog "have their way" in the shrine as well. The orange design is a shadow of the jacquard--the punch card that interfaced the vast worlds of labor, nature, and machine in the old silk mills.

The Missed Encounter

DAY THREE
"The poet is one who can tolerate the missed encounter
and end up writing of it--overcoming his disaffection."
--Barrett Watten, correlation of Paterson, Book 1

Well, I knew there was some wisdom to be gained from waiting for my next special guest for an hour after driving two hours in the heatwave, then driving back after he no-showed. But I am still not completely convinced it is wisdom. Coming soon, another discorrelated replacement for the very city, which again we missed stepping foot upon. Is it always the power of the falls that sweeps us away? The powers of the false might get us closer. I really am trying. The wisdom of the graffiti found the next day tells us that it is difficult to fail, that one has to try at that too. Sadly, though, mulling over the genius on the wall, I think it is a product of faulty grammar (genius produced by its reverse) . . . to its left and right are other more unschooled evocations of something gone awry, without the hint of the spiritual exuberance of El Ghazali ("you possess what cannot be lost in a shipwreck") or the Buddha, so that, one can only conclude that she means "I try so hard and lose it all." I still think I'm in the world of this "and."