Paterson (Revised Edition) (30 page)

However, my own conclusion is that the HRC document is probably a draft of the letter MN eventually sent to WCW, and that the Buffalo E5 typescript of the letter is, in the absence of the letter itself, the closest to the source document currently available, and the textual notes to this section of the poem are based upon this conclusion. Thus I note the verbal differences between the printed version and the E5 typescript below, but not the differences between the HRC document and the
Paterson
text. (Interested readers may consult Professor Graham’s article, in which all the examples quoted match the HRC document.)

Since WCW’s treatment of this letter has been the subject of some critical debate, I record below the reasons for my own conclusion:

1)
WCW’s practice elsewhere in
Paterson
with letters is to cut and condense, but not to add substantial material of his own. Changes he makes to letters can be traced in the various typescripts of the poem, but for this letter no changes beyond the cuts noted below can be documented in the Buffalo typescripts.

2)
The HRC document itself contains a number of revisions of vocabulary and style that are consistent with the letter being composed and revised as it is being written. It does not have the character of a copy of a letter already written, and indicates an on-going involvement with the process of composition that also makes unlikely the subsequently sent letter being copied verbatim from the HRC draft. On the other hand, Buffalo E; has some characteristics of a transcription. The differences between the HRC document and E5 could be explained as amplification and clarification by MN of her points as she rewrites from a draft.

3)
MN made contradictory statements concerning the relationship of the HRC material to the printed version in
Paterson.
In material held privately, she asserts in one letter that the HRC document is an “exact copy” of the printed version, but in another that WCW made only trivial changes to what she sent him. Both comments are in letters written forty years after the event. In addition, the 1966 letter from the HRC agreeing to purchase material from MN, including this document, describes the items purchased as letters from WCW, and drafts of letters to WCW.

4)
A number of the passages present in the E5 version but not the HRC document concern details either that WCW could not be expected to know, or that he is unlikely to have added to the letter. In one example he is unlikely to have invented—the references to Miss Fleming, ST and SS—WCW has to disguise identities, including that of Harvey Breit, for the printed version (see note to pp. 87–88 below). In his correspondence with MN, WCW is very careful in his references to her aborted relationship with Breit, a mutual acquaintance, and WCW never mentions MN in his letters to Breit. In another passage that is part of a longer section WCW cut from E5, but which is not in the HRC document, MN discusses her relationship with her son and includes details that WCW would be unlikely to invent. A collation of the HRC document with E5 reveals a number of similar examples.

5)
The HRC document does not contain the postscripts of the printed version, although its final page contains space for the first postscript to be started. The missing postscripts support the possibility that MN rewrote and revised the letter from the HRC draft, and—in her continuing concern to strike the right tone and convey what she wanted to communicate—she added the postscripts before sending off the letter. The postscripts also contain information, concerning the circumstances of the stolen money order, for example, that WCW would be unlikely to know or invent.

6)
MN’s papers, privately held, indicate that on occasion she would write a preliminary draft before the sent version of a letter. This is the case with the letter of March 30, 1949, to WCW noted below.

87     the Introduction to your Paterson     In the early 1940s WCW was calling the whole poem as then conceived an “Introduction.”

woman’s need to/woman’s needing to

“sail free in her own element”     MN paraphrases WCW in his review of Anaïs Nin’s
The Winter of Artifice.
The review appeared in
New Directions Seven
(1942), 434.

relationships with other women/friendships with other women

awareness/awarenesses

doctor/Dr. P.

88     almost in/in almost

W/Woodstock [New York]

so simple /as simple

Miss Fleming     HRC and E5 read Hawkins. WCW had written to Iris Barry, Film Library Director at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in December 1942 concerning a possible position for MN and the letter had been passed on to Frances Hawkins, who—as she wrote to WCW on March 9, 1943—handled personnel matters at the Museum, and she offered to talk to MN (Yale uncat.). In the fall of 1942 Marianne Moore also made some job inquiries on MN’s behalf at WCW’s request (Moore to WCW, October 1942 and October 11, 1942 (Yale uncat.).

S.T. and S.S…. Clara … Jeanne     E5 reads H.B. for S.T. but the other initials are unchanged. Harvey Breit’s wife was named Clara, and S.S. may be Sydney Salt, who, as Elizabeth O’Neil has pointed out to me, dedicates two books of his poetry to “Jeanne.” Salt lived close to MN in Greenwich Village at this time. In other letters to WCW, MN refers to a “Sydney.”

89     I asked for/I asked you for

 and maybe/and then maybe

 And then     All previous printings have a printer’s error “And the”

 Miss X/Miss Hawkins

so badly     On E5 the paragraph continues for twenty additional lines, discussing the poor employment prospects at the Office of War Information, and “at the Museum itself,” and MN’s relationship with her son.

That I’m in the/I’m in the

with the social/with social

welfare     All previous printings and E5 have “wellfare,” but MN spells correctly on HRC

kind at all/sort at all

90     acceptably/acceptedly

 I was able/I was then able

 like measles/like the measles

that introduction to my poems     In
New Directions Seven
(1942), 413–414.

91     the only thing/the only happy thing

La votre C. WCW alludes to Criseyde’s signature in writing to Troilus in Chaucer’s
Troilus and Criseyde
, see SL 233.

21 Pine Street     The letter is written from 21 Grove Street, New York.

Brown’s/[James] Laughlin’s

is dead now/is now dead

he took any/he who took any

or antisocial/or any antisocial

I’m reminded/I am reminded

A.N./Anaïs Nin     See note to p. 87 above.

those pages/these pages

On March 30, 1949, the correspondence between WCW and MN resumed when MN wrote of discovering her letters in
Paterson II
while browsing in a Woodstock bookstore (ND Archives). This resumption continued until 1956 when WCW was forced to curtail most of his correspondence following his strokes.

WCW’s final letter, congratulating MN on having a book of her poems published by the Swallow Press, concludes: “You are one of the hardiest women and one of the most gifted and generous women I know. I am happy at your success” (October 5, 1956, HRC).

The dust jacket of the first edition carried “A Note on Paterson Book III” by WCW, dated September 28, 1949:

Paterson
is a man (since I am a man) who dives from cliffs and the edges of waterfalls, to his death—finally. But for all that he is a woman (since I am not a woman) who
is
the cliff and the waterfall. She spreads protecting fingers about him as he plummets to his conclusions to keep the winds from blowing him out of his path. But he escapes, in the end, as I have said.

As he dies the rocks fission gradually into wild flowers the better to voice their sorrow, a language that would have liberated them both from their distresses had they but known it in time to prevent catastrophe.

The brunt of the four books of
Paterson
(of which this is the third, ‘The Library’) is a search for the redeeming language by which a man’s premature death, like the death of Mrs. Cumming in Book I, and the woman’s (the man’s) failure to hold him (her) might have been prevented.

Book IV will show the perverse confusions that come of a failure to untangle the language and make it our own as both man and woman are carried helplessly toward the sea (of blood) which, by their failure of speech, awaits them. The poet alone in this world holds the key to their final rescue.

94     Cities … Santayana     From George Santayana,
The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel
(New York, 1936) 140. (The next two sentences in Santayana read: “No: for him cities were congested spots, ugly, troublesome and sad. Boston, when he first passed through it, seemed to him nothing but Great Falls multiplied.”)

sets up her trophies Santayana’s text reads “sets up all her trophies”

95     Avery     Samuel Putnam Avery (1822–1904), who made a fortune advising American buyers of European art, see Weaver 209.

97–98     Blow! … from the reading     In
12th Street
(December 1949) WCW published material from various parts of Book III as a single piece under the title “Paterson Book III: Preface.” In addition to this passage the material included “The “Castle’ too … So be it” p. 99, “Papers … Unabashed. So be it” pp. 117–118, “Upon which … So be it. So be it. So be it” p. 130.

97     So be it     WCW told Pound “the ‘so be it’ I copied verbatim from a translation of a Plains Indian prayer. … It meant what it says: if it so is then so let it be. In other words, to hell with it” (December 1949, Lilly Library, Indiana University).

97     Cyclone, fire/and flood     On February 8, 1902, a devastating fire consumed much of central Paterson, destroying the Danforth Free Public Library (and most of its contents) among other buildings. Nelson and Shriner record “there was a strong gale blowing … [which] acted like a huge bellows” (505). The following month the Passaic river “which flows through a large part of the city” flooded. “With the enormous volume of water that poured down the river bed and the territory adjacent, came huge floes of ice, carrying destruction wherever they went” (507). Later in the year a freak tornado struck the city. The library was rebuilt on a new site, and reopened in 1905.

98     no wind/no winds     
12th Street
(1949)

doors … hands     In
12th Street
reads “doors/that the wind holds; wrenches from our hands/—and arms.”

98     Old newspaper files … Works     As Weaver 209 notes, the various details are from 1936 issues of
The Prospector:
“two little girls, firmly locked in each other’s arms,” July 10, p. 6; a photograph of the Paterson Cricket Club in 1896, August 21, p. 6; the story of the “two local millionaires” appears in the issue of October 9; the “Indian rock shelter” is described in the October 2 issue; the August 28 issue carried an article on the Rogers Locomotive Works.

no language     In
12th Street
“So be it” refrain follows here, and is omitted following “home”

reels … So be it     In
12th Street
reads

reels—caught still in its wrappings,

wind-held. So be it. Starts back amazed

from the reading.

98–99     Gently! … hat!     These lines are part of a poem WCW published in 1937 titled “Patterson: Episode 17”
[sic]
, seventy-eight lines of which are incorporated into Book III. Further material from the poem is on pp. 104–105 and 127–128. In “Patterson: Episode 17,” the concept of “Beautiful Thing” is first linked to a figure beating a carpet on a church lawn, but the two opening stanzas that describe the figure, and a concluding stanza, are omitted from the material incorporated into
Paterson.
An early draft of the 1937 poem now at Harvard is titled “To a Tall Young Colored Woman.” For the 1937 poem see CP1 439–43.

99     The “Castle” … Lambert     Catholina Lambert (1834–1923) was born in Yorkshire, England, and became one of Paterson’s richest mill owners. He built his Castle residence “Belle Vista” in 1892. It was sold to the city in 1925 and now houses the Passaic County Park Commission and the Passaic County Historical Society. In the winter of 1936 the art gallery wing, by then in disrepair, was demolished, despite the opposition of two fierce editorials in
The Prosfector.
For the story of Lambert and the Castle see the richly illustrated
Silk and Sandstone: The Story of Catholina Lambert and His Castle
, by Flavia Alaya (Passaic County Historical Society, 1984).

99     The “Castle” … be it”     
12th Street
carries an additional line before this passage, “Come death! Come clean death!” and adds following the passage “Come wind! Come flood! Come cleansing/fire. So be it. Come end of the world:”

99     Rose and I … now     WCW told his friend Robert Carlton Brown (1886–1959) on September 10, 1948, “Paterson III is stalled for the moment. I’m going to use your letter about Gurlie Flynn and the others in it” (Southern Illinois Univ. Library). Rose was Brown’s second wife. The letter has not been found, but a Yale Za188 version of this passage is headed “Excerpt from letter” and begins with an additional sentence: “Your Paterson, Book II should sell because it hits the semi-documentary groove.” On February 25 [1950?] Brown wrote to WCW of his enthusiastic reading of Book III, adding “I called Rose to my side to look at the damned thing now” (Yale uncat.). The famous “Paterson Pageant” was staged in New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1913 for the benefit of the Paterson strikers.

Za 188 reads “on the Pagent,” and “the Union Hall.”

102–103     The Indians … among us”     The story appears in “Extracts From a Work Called ‘Breeden Raedt’” in
New York Documentary History IV
, 67–68, although it is unclear if this is WCW’s source. WCW’s first paragraph summarizes the language of this account, and then follows it almost verbatim—although omitting some specific details of the torture. A much shorter account appears in both Nelson and NS, although only Nelson 38 gives the New York source.