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"

Measure and Beyond

I've been dipping into Michael Golston's Rhythm and Race in Modernist Poetry and Science. I've had a long standing interest in ideas of "musical soul" as they intersect with questions of technology and race. Golston is one of the few writers I've found who discuss early ethnomusicologists like Milton Metfessel and Carl Seashore, who created elaborate recording machines to analyze the emotional qualities of African American song. (Metfessel even made a graphic analysis of the "negro laugh.") After reading the first very interesting couple of chapters in Golston's book, I skipped ahead to his thin, albeit important final chapter on Williams' "measure." For Golston, Williams' concept of "measure" is his definitive, yet little explored challenge to the rhythmic ideologies of other modernists such as Pound and Yeats (and detailing these "rhythmic ideologies" forms the rest of the book's meat.)
Williams' move "beyond lyric" requires a dispassionate stance towards these rhythmic myths promulgated by other modernists, tied biomechanically to blood and pulse and fantasmatically to the inaudible consanguinities of race and nation. Williams' more constructivist notion of "measure" always struck me as non-musical, and Golston solidifies my hunch that its association with musical notions is misleading. The word conjures up both science and haberdashery, a numerical span or swatch held out at arm's length. If anything, Williams' "measure" is something you do with materials after the fact. The concept of rhythm, of the other hand, has an originary feel, making claims to a core authentic outpouring, which is why it encourages both the irrational plenitudes of "soulful" performance and the cultic violence of the fascist homebody.
In tandem with this book, I was reading Susan Stewart's essay "Letter on Sound." If the above sounds Derridean in its suspicion of the vitalist category of rhythm, it still maintains a clear dichotomy which Stewart's (more Derridean) approach seems to challenge. While Williams' "measure" is not really synonymous with meter, Stewart's distinction between rhythm and meter seems to evoke a creative tension between the planned, measured structure of a poem, and the various existential or performative iterations of it. "The sound of the poem emerges from this dynamic tension between the unfolding temporality of the utterance and the recursive temporality of the fixed aspects of the form. . . . Song, by virtue of its measure, is fixed and repeatable, although it is, like all utterances, subject to transformation. It is the tension between the unfolding semantic pressure of speech and the asemantic pulse of measure that defines the possibilities of lyric art." (34-7)

Why I Chose New Jersey to Look at I Don’t Know

In the recently released documentary of Arthur Russell, Allen Ginsberg describes him as “like William Carlos Williams, only he sings.” Here is a audio clip from the documentary, a collaboration between Russell and Ginsberg.

Note from the Midwest

Zack Pieper, of this band, may finally be getting a Patersong out. He writes:

"Riles and I are kicking around some Paterson ideas.
He is reading Book 1 now. He's not really familiar with
modernist poetry, but he certainly is versed in modernist
composers! We talked about what Williams might be doing in a
musical sense. His syllables fall on off-beats sometimes sometimes
not. They are sometimes "haunted" by pentameter. But so is a
lot of the best prose. I think. But they are PHRASE based, & are susceptible to
changes in texture, changes in tempo. The music's got
to serve the words in a project like this. Fit tightly.
PRECISELY BECAUSE what all those guys like Kreymborg and
Jolas and Wallace Stevens too, saw in Williams WAS
his subtelty of measure, the WAY the words really WERE
the music, they did not alude to music, nor make a
kind of formalistic PARABLE about the ideas about
music or 18th century ideas bout music and theology,

No he did not do this did he? He was (I bet) a pretty
insufferable inscruttable old prick. A safe man, a cautious
man, with a sentimentality more urbane than Whitman's.
A statesman in disguise. A Yankee Norman Rockwell doctor.
But he saw the WILDNESS underneath the bland pastoral.

Have you heard Reich's version of The Desert Music?
Not bad. But: I HATE HOW IN "Poetry/Song"explorations
the human voice is so often detached, floating above
and separate from the unpopulated dreamy or romantic
soundscape below rendering it into "atmosphere"
DEAR GOD I HATE ATMOSPHERES! I want to hear a fat magic
marker scribbling on paper, you know? kind of Alban Berg
meets Cecil Taylor, BUT with a logic that follows
the WORDS. When he gets measured, when he gets prosaic
the music does. The music dissapears inside the words.
Not vice versa."

saxifrage

I swear, the last (and first) time I was at Mt. Rainer, the park signs had hieroglyphics for "saxifrage." I called the park ranger to confirm this memory, but all I got were dead answering machines (of course they are not at their phones, they are in the wild!) I usually take pictures of these things, so I feel addled having no evidence to back me up, but I'm not going to drive all the way back to the great mountain on the near horizon just for this one post. Believe me when I say that saxifrage is plentiful enough that even if a hieroglyphic for this flower were not to be found, it should be there in some imagined guide. Because the word has a hieroglyphic nature that Williams would have appreciated. From the Latin, "saxi" and "frage" combines two favorite Williams concepts: fragmentation and rock. That no flower appears in the etymology is perhaps also what drew Williams to it as he inspiration for "no ideas but in things." For the flower emerges, invisible as it were to the object pieces of language, but indebted to them nevertheless, in the same way that meaning breaks between elements of montage rather than in separate film cells. Both breaking (of the rock) and building (of the flower) are combined here in a single, slow geologic complex. Here is Williams' poem about saxifrage, the original locus for Paterson's "no ideas but in things." It is a deceptively simple poem, somewhat pastoral, but so much about writing itself that one is unsure where the metaphors stop and where things begin.

A Sort of a Song

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
-- through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

When Williams says "let the snake wait under/his weed" it seems like he's saying: give that to the snake, it don't interest me none. Does that carry over to writing with words? Is Williams NOT writing with words (my interpretation above that the poetry happens BETWEEN the words might carry this out)? In this case, a metaphor that reconciles people to the stones would be the problem with metaphor. However, the "let" could also be a kind of laissez-faire attitude, a benediction even. This is what snake does. Amen. This is what words do. Amen. Yet, is this the natural order of things? "Let" could also announce the trope of hysteron proteron (since the snake is waiting and the words are striking: a distinct reversal). If all these are true, he's caught in a kind of disabling polysemy. So he returns to simple commands (to himself or to the reader). Compose. (but then he takes it a step further, and hits upon the mot juste.) Invent! He is not reconciled to writing and metaphor, but is split from it (even as it does the splitting, but in splitting it himself he (sort of) makes a song of it, or at least emerges as a kind of unified being, one, not two (although there is a two within the one.)

In Spite of the Grey Secrecy of Time

Since there was some talk recently on the web concerning Allen Ginsberg’s singing of Blake (here at PoemTalk), I decided to revisit my earlier plan to put some of Ginsberg’s letters in Paterson to music. Once I heard the drony, chanty quality of Ginsberg’s harmonium-backed quaverings, the project suddenly seemed more doable, but I think I ended up sounding more like a drunken Irishman than Ginsberg—cosmic troubadour and prophet of the Fall(s). You decide—and of course are welcome to come up with your own riff on Ginsberg’s letters for inclusion on Impossible Object! I took not a few liberties with the original, some of which are, admittedly, outright mistakes (I misread “phase” as “phrase,” although I still think I like “phrase” better, at least in the context of the song; it’s a word not as caught up in the extended weather imagery of the letter, so maybe it’s not such a sin?): Here is the original:

Dear Doctor:
In spite of the grey secrecy of time and my own self-shuttering doubts in these youthful rainy days, I would like to make my presence in Paterson known to you, and I hope you will welcome this from me, an unknown young poet, to you, an unknown old poet, who live in the same rusty county of the world. Not only do I inscribe this missive somewhat in the style of those courteous sages of yore who recognized one another across generations as brotherly children of the muses (whose names they well know) but also as fellow citizenly Chinamen of the same province, whose gastanks, junkyards, fens of the alley, millways, funeral parlors, river-visions—aye! The falls itself—are images white-woven in their very beards. . . .
I do not know if you will like my poetry or not—that is, how far your own inventive persistence excludes less independent or youthful attempts to perfect, renew, transfigure, and make contemporarily real an old style or lyric machinery, which I use to record the struggle with imagination of the clouds, with which I have been concerned. I enclose a few samples of my best writing. All that I have done has a program, consciously or not, running on from phase to phase, from the beginnings of emotional breakdown, to momentary raindrops from the clouds become corporeal, to a renewal of human objectivity which I take to be ultimately identical with no ideas but in things. (172-73)

And here is the song,
I am accompanied by the piano and sleighbell talents of the immaginarium light outreach inner~youth center, with whom I share a rusty county of the world (. . . well actually, we are in contiguous rusty counties.)
“Brighten/ . . the corner where you/ are!”

(image of unknown young poets meeting older known poets courtesy immaginarium light outreach inner-youth center)

It's Hard to be Hydrocephalic

Last week, New Jersey as an Impossible Object taped Graham Stowe singing his Patersong "The Skeleton of Peter the Dwarf" based off material from Books I and IV (pp. 10 and 192 respectively). The music is by Jonathan Sircy. More of their songs based on Paterson can be found on archive.org. Graham is a doctoral candidate here at the University of South Carolina, and is embarking on a dissertation about Williams' Paterson and Olson's Maximus Poems. Along with Kenneth Camacho, he's kept a blog, The Paterson Project, which documents their use of Paterson as raw material for new poems and songs.

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.

To Lead the Mind Away

Joanne Hsieh and Jesse Roy, who last year regaled us with their song of Sam Patch, have produced another Patersong especially for New Jersey as an Impossible Object. From Book III (The Library), their rendition of Locust Tree would beat Williams reading it hands down, although were he to be backed up by Allen Ginsberg on harmonica, Marcia Nardi on bass, and Joe Gould on the spoons, he might have provided more competition.

For there is a wind or ghost of a wind
in all books echoing the life
there, a high wind that fills the tubes
of the ear until we think we hear a wind,
actual .

to lead the mind away.

Drawn from the streets we break off
our minds’ seclusion and are taken up by
the books’ winds, seeking, seeking
down the wind
until we are unaware which is the wind and
which the wind’s power over us .
to lead the mind away (96)

(Click on image for song. Joanne Hsieh on piano and voice; Jesse Roy on guitar and voice; Recorded and mixed by Jesse Roy).

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.

End of Discussion!

Before we were able to begin our last discussion of Paterson in Paterson, we were locked out of the Ivanhoe Arts Center for about an hour. We took the time to slowly get stoned on Smirnoff Ice while gazing intently at the falls of the raceway. Was this the true experience of Paterson--following the twisting braids of the waters, focusing on this layer, now that, as the patterns fell into their destined pool? Once inside, perhaps begrudgingly, we took up the discussion of bird mnemonics, Williams' virgin-whore complex, pastoral poetry, and Alexander Hamilton's final demise on the Weehawken shores (the subject of Williams' unfinished Book VI, and pictured above). The discussion series ends with a rousing version of "But Not For Me" with Mike accompanying on the piano. This mp3 is another long file, perhaps best suited to loading onto an iPod and listening in traffic. Or you can just go to the end of the file to the "musical number," which includes includes the brilliant intro that no one, except maybe Bobby Short, sings, because of the all-pervasive influence of the Chet Baker version or its dated reference to Beatrice Fairfax.

Bulkeley, Hunt, Williard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint

A couple weeks ago, I bought a used copy of Emerson's selected works for 3 bucks. I been thinking of having something like this in my bookshelves for years, and 3 bucks could not be beat. However, what sealed the deal was opening the book to the poem Hamatreya, the opening of which immediately struck me as a precursor to Paterson:

"Bulkeley, Hunt, Williard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood"

Like the historical passages of Paterson, I was stuck by both the poetry and intractability of actuality, here embodied in the names. I wonder how far back we can find examples of this preference for historical quiddity rather than mythological abstraction in poetry. My sense is not farther back than Emerson (oh, wait, there's the Homeric catalogue). In three lines, Emerson creates the agricultural cosmos that in the end he delivers back to the earth. It would seem that he brings up these names only to belittle their importance in the face of death and larger meaning. But, the paradox is that they have made it into the poem afterall (and can now be Googled).
When I finally sat down with the poem, another significant relation to Paterson became clear. The first part of the poem has long lines in blocks, and ends with

"Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.
Hear what the Earth says:--"

This lovable Victorian colash sets off a section called "Earth-Song," which, like the unannounced, song-like breaks in Paterson, is formatted on the page with much shorter lines, as if to force a distinction between lyrical poetry and prose within poetry itself. The Earth-Song, like the sounds of Williams' falls, encourages a leveling of distinctions and a giving over to a song which is noise, silence, nothing, void, mute, chill.

Sam Patch!

"There's no mistake in Sam Patch." Songsters Joanne Hsieh and Jesse Roy regale us with this Patersong of the man who lept the Passaic falls and became famous for it. Click on Sam's image for their leapin' lyritudes. Joanne writes from the field: "Well, Jesse and I actually visited Paterson a little while ago just for the hell of it, to maybe get inspired to write a song. We took a super 8 camera and got some footage (as of yet undeveloped) of a condemned old mill or factory. It said no trespassing but we did anyways, and we witnessed some stunning industrial decay -- forces of nature at work creating impossible monumental beauty. The film ran out and it may have been all underexposed . . . but we'll see. We also went in search of the Paterson Project, a Jevohah's Witness establishment encompassing many acres where they train ministers, produce bibles, etc... but no one we spoke to knew what the hell we were talking about, even the people at a local blue collar diner where we ordered too many french fries which we had to take home. What a trippy place. The doggie package containing the french fries is still in my freezer as an artifact of our sojourn." Well, Old Man Google says the bible camp she talks about is in Patterson, NY, not Paterson, NJ, but who can tell as you go head over heels into the mist and spume?

Look for the Nul

Day Two
The problem with approaching Paterson, is that it shoots you out as soon as you get to it. I had the bright idea of taking a side trip to Paterson last week while stuck in Friday rush hour and weekend shore traffic. Which just meant more traffic, but for art's sake. A stop at the falls only felt like cheating. All-in-all, an eight-hour trip thru the impossible object, with nothing gained.
The next day, in Baltimore, I'm taken to a festival with a ride called the Scatter, or the Splatter, or the Skooter. It looks like some very old but charming model of how the universe moves, spinning under the overpass. Is this road overhead the same road I crawled from Scatterson on? Incidently, Williams uses the term "scatter" fairly frequently in Paterson as a term of opprobrium. The Skatter, however, is a fine species of people-moving, and in comparison to the turnpike, as celestial as its design promises. I don't think it's G-force that holds you in, more like a D-force; it's certainly not the chain they lock between you and the void, insubstantial like the strap on a Chanel handbag.

Pat(t)erson: Two T's or One?

Day One
In search of the elusive Paterson--both the poem and the city--we find ourselves not in New Jersey but in Patterson, Georgia, about 40 miles north of the Okefenokee Swamp. Our special guest drifter, Clark Lunberry, has a good sense of the pith and essence, the quiddity and je ne sais qua of Paterson, yet has never been there. This Patterson was conveniently at hand, perhaps too convenient compared to the chaos of Paterson, NJ where the falls--once the unmanageable, excessive, flowing-matter against which the poet would fail to measure--is now a quaint vignette compared to its environs. Clark talked about how Williams at one point started to hate the poem and its failure. I found it hard to believe that Williams didn't start the poem knowing full well his barrel was heading for the Passaic River's misty plummet. We found a dead library, a rocket to Jesus, and a very good cafe with a jangly piano in the next town over, where Clark requested I play "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (he's from Kansas) and I obliged with an approximation.
Clark's work on Williams and Robert Smithson, "So Much Depends: Printed Matter, Dying Words and the Entropic Poem" can be found at: http://www.unf.edu/~clunberr/research.html