Paterson (Revised Edition) (31 page)

103–104     From 1869 … assembled … A spectator … adventures.     WCW’s own prose, in verse in early drafts. KH and Thirlwall both note
The Prospector
as the source of the information in this passage. The August 7, 1936, issue carried a long article on the tightrope performances over the Falls of DeLave, Leslie, and Dobbs, including a photograph of one of Leslie’s performances. The article contains the central details of WCW’s passage.

110     the Englishman     WCW’s father, William George Williams, who died in 1918 and who figures more extensively here in earlier drafts of the poem. New Barbadoes is an area in Bergen County, New Jersey.

114     to it … mother? ) These lines are spaced differently on the Yale Za188 and KS typescripts and in the first edition. The change occurs with the first printing of NC:

to it not by intellection but

by sub-intellection (to want to be

blind as a pretext for

saying, We’re so proud of you!

A wonderful gift! How
do

you find the time for it in

your busy life? It must be a great

thing to have such a pastime.

But you were always a strange

boy. How’s your mother? )

114–115     With due ceremony … distributed     Adapted and rearranged from material in Nelson 35–38. The NS 51–54 version is almost the same, but Za188 follows Nelson where they differ.

115–116     It started … night… When discovered … doomed     Source not found, but possibly WCW’s summary of information in NS 505 and elsewhere. The passages are extensively revised in Za188.

115     song/songs     
The Tiger’s Eye
(1949)

118     An iron dog     Weaver 210 cites an article on “The Brass Dog” (actually made of sheet-iron) that is probably WCW’s source,
Passaic County Historical Society Bulletin
(November 1944), 19–20. The dog hung outside a tin-shop. “At 12.30 a.m. December 9, 1846 the shop was completely burned out, together with several buildings along side, but the dog kept watch over the place never to move from the spot.” WCW’s copy of this issue of the
Bulletin
is with his papers at Yale (Za W677).

118     iron dog/bronze dog     
12th Street
(1949)

laughter … green     
12th Street
has an additional line: “an empurpled face choked blue with laughter”

a multiformity/the multiformity     
The Tiger’s Eye
(1949)

124–125     Hi Kid … So long     KH annotates on UVA typescript “letter to my maid Gladys [Enalls] from her girlfriend [Dolly],” and see Weaver 210. Gladys ran away in 1942, and the letter was among a number found in her room, some of which WCW transcribes in Za188 for possible inclusion in
Paterson.
The original of the letter he finally included, postmarked December 2, 1941, is at UVA.

In the various retypings some changes crept into the idiosyncratic spelling and diction of the original letter. In two cases—“I was a feeling good” and “car slaped on brakes”—I have restored the original because the first edition reproduced it, and the editorial changes (“I was feeling good” and “slapped” ) were made posthumously with the 1963 printing.

Other verbal differences from the original that occur through various retypings:

only high browns/only of high browns

stopped facing/stoped facing

half filled/half fill

ever since/every since

supposed to be the father/suppose to be the father

supposed to be going to have/suppose to be going to have

to have kids/to have kid This change is marked by WCW, Za188.

3rd/3th

3 kids/3 kid reads “kid” on KS typescript

your next/the next

Well here/Will here

WCW omits a one-sentence paragraph following “everywhere” and before “Bab” in all typescripts: “Well you said you was coming Thankgiven why didn’t you come?”

The ellipsis covers one and a half pages in the original that appear on early typescripts but are later cut. The writer details more pregnancies, then names “Boy’s trying to go with me,” “Boy’s I go with,” “Boy’s I like almost mad
about
,” and “Boy’s I am trying to get.”

129     There is … propellers     WCW’s own copies of the
Passaic County Historical Society Bulletin
now at Yale include the December 1944 issue, which carried a piece on “the first successfully operated submarine” now resting “in Westside Park, Paterson, N.J.,” designed by John Philip Holland in Paterson in 1881. “His first boat for experimental purposes was tried on the river Passaic and this boat now is … housed in the Museum of the City of Paterson.”

130     intervenes/supervenes     
12th Street
(1949)

sullied/muddied     
12th Street

at the bridge, silent/silent at the bridge     
12th Street

.     OParadiso!/to—the history     
12th Street

132     The remains … mourned     KH researched and summarized this material for WCW, which he then revised and shortened. In a note to WCW accompanying her summary, now with Yale Za188, KH notes the titles of her sources. The details and some of the language come from: Lydia A. Jocelyn and Nathan J. Cuffee,
Lords of the Soil
(Boston, 1905) 1–17; Gabriel Furman,
Antiquities of Long Island
(Port Washington, L.I., n.d.) 60; Ralph Duvall,
The History of Shelter Island
(Shelter Island, N.Y., 1932) 14. An earlier version of KH’s notes is filed with the UVA typescripts. The two ellipses in the printed version mark WCW’s cuts of KH’s prose—by a total of thirty-five words.

133–134     About Merselis … cattle     In Nelson 269; the first four words of the passage are WCW’s summary. In Nelson “Merselis” is also spelled “Merseilles.”

Three of the printed version’s verbal differences from Nelson originate with the apparent transcription, filed with Za188:

confined/being confined

that some/lest some

to say/to say that

The others occur through the various retypings:

stare/stare in

of the whole neighborhood/not only of herself and her family, but of the whole neighborhood

everybody/everyone

he was/he was commonly

the witch/that witch

would soon be/were soon to be

exchange/interchange

wife was/wife had been

135–136     It was … bank     WCW’s prose. “She” is KH, who annotates on the UVA typescripts “Lester Wadsworth told me of this, he was the orchestra leader c.
1930
,” and see Weaver 211. In some of the Za188 typescripts the details are in verse. An earlier version identified Wadsworth as the son of Rutherford printer Charlie Wadsworth (see
A
6).

137     A version of the first three lines appears in WCW’s short 1938 poem “At the Bar” (CP1 457), one of a number originally published as “from ‘Paterson,’” and part of his earlier concept of the poem.

138     The first two-thirds of a letter sent to WCW by Ezra Pound, October 13 [1948], from St. Elizabeths hospital (Yale uncat.). Through September and October WCW and Pound had corresponded on dramatists.

The line     “(re. C.O.E.     Panda Panda     )” is WCW’s addition. When Pound received
Paterson III
, Dorothy Pound wrote to WCW, in December 1949: “Ez says many fine things in Paterson iii…. E puzzled about a Panda?” (Yale uncat.). WCW replied, “The
Panda Panda
, I’m sorry to say, has no meaning—merely a nonsense value in order not to reveal anything that might identify the work in question. I don’t know what put Panda into my head” (December 1949, Lilly Library, Indiana University).

In a note on the KS typescript WCW instructs “to occupy a full page, as it stands—facing the page following.” The instructions were not followed in NC. WCW incorporated Pound’s reaction to this juxtaposition into Book IV, see p. 182.

With the posthumous 1963 printing the printed text was altered to bring it closer to the idiosyncratic spelling and spacing of Pound’s original, the original having been deposited at Yale. However the first edition arrangement is in the earliest typescripts, and they indicate that WCW was not concerned to check that the original’s lineation had been reproduced on the page exactly, or that all of Pound’s shorthand had been correctly deciphered. In any case, the spacing in both versions is only an approximation of the original. I have returned to the text as it appeared in the first edition and the NC editions, and record below the verbal differences between the first edition text, the source, and the post-1963 printings:

got sake/gor Zake (source and 1963)

exaggerate/egggzaggerate (source and 1963)

in the source, written above “! !” is “(my xt)”     Not in any printed version

The spacing and punctuation of the following lines in 1963 more closely approximate the source:

Loeb.—plus Frobenius, plus

Gesell     plus Brooks Adams

ef you ain’t read him all.—

Then Golding ‘Ovid’ is in Everyman lib.

The 1963 version of the last two lines reads:

just cause it is mentioned eng

passang.     is fraugs….

Below I give these two lines as they appear in the original, and also what follows in the letter and is omitted from
Paterson
, although included in the earliest drafts:

just cause it is mentioned     .     eng

then of course there

passang     .     is fraugs.     hv. yu

read
all
the fraugs fr. Willy to

M. Jean? (want “Crucifixion”

on loan . ? ? (it aint a ch. service) prob. unobtainable

here.

(N.B. Nancy has fergave me & no

longer thinks I orter be shot fer not

assassinatin Franco).

& so on yrz

Ez

139     SUBSTRATUM … found here     The chart and summary are in Nelson II, although not the title “Substratum.”

Four entries, some of them duplications, are in Nelson but omitted in the printed version. They are included in the earlier drafts, but missing by the KS typescript.

540 feet….Soft shale

565 feet….Soft shale

613 feet….Soft shale

1,180 feet….Fine quicksand, reddish

The omitted material marked by the ellipsis reads: “and the character and amount of the saline impurities giving little hope of success by going deeper.” The Nelson account goes on to describe the analysis of the water’s minerals that was subsequently made.

Two other verbal differences occur through the retypings:

the tabular/a tabular

of Europe/in Europe

2 x 1 x 1/16 in.     I have restored the reading of the original, and of all the typescripts.

140     
American poetry … exist
Weaver 211 notes the source, “From a review of a group of American poets by George Barker, ‘Fat Lady at the Circus,’
Poetry (London)
13 (June-July 1948), 39.” See Weaver for further background and a 1966 comment by Barker.

143–44     When an African … know     From Sophie Drinker,
Music and Women: The Story of Women in Their Relation to Music
(New York, 1948), 11. Drinker’s quoted material slightly misquotes from D. Amaury Talbot,
Woman
’
s Mysteries of a Primitive People
(London, 1915), 208. The ellipsis is Drinker’s.

Differences from the original, present by the KS typescript:

slain/killed

singing songs/singing sad songs

bough/boughs

the spirit/his spirit

fertility/virility

Until the 1968 fourth printing Ibibio was misspelled Ibidio, probably an error on the galleys, since the spelling is correct on the KS typescript. The error was one listed in Weaver’s 1967 note to James Laughlin (see “A Note on the Text”).

144     I was thinking … him     The speaker is annotated by Thirlwall in his copy of
Paterson
—Betty Stedman, the recipient of the Musty letter, see pp. 53–54. Her friend, Eleanor Musgrove Britton Mark, was shot by husband Noel Thomas Mark on June 24, 1946, in Metairie, Louisiana. The husband told police he mistook his wife for a prowler.

Stanley Stedman writes: “Eleanor was my wife’s dearest friend … My wife was certain that he murdered her and was upset and bitter for years. Eleanor was also a patient of Dr. Williams. I feel sure that the paragraph in question is a pretty good rendition of what Elizabeth said to Dr. Williams that day. The reference to Clifford occurred because my wife felt that none of this would have happened if Eleanor had married him. I do remember us sending him some off color jokes” (letter to Christopher MacGowan, December 15, 1990).

Shortly afterwards WCW wrote his short story “The Farmers’ Daughters,” which centers upon the friendship of the two women, but did not publish it until 1957. See
The Farmer? Daughters
(1961), 345–374.

Corydon & Phyllis
     The two pastoral figures are based, according to WCW’s correspondence and evidence in earlier typescripts, on “a distinguished woman, a prominent figure in the New York and international world, living on Sutton Place with a view such as I describe in the poem” (letter to Marianne Moore, June 23, 1951, Rosenbach Library, printed with omissions in SL 305), whose brother was a financier—Thirlwall annotates as “Ann[e] Morgan” in his copy of SL; and on a nurse originally from Paterson whom WCW had known in the late 1920s. The letters in this section are all WCW’s inventions.

157     than woman     Harvard typescript reads “than a woman”

160     Via?/Chemistry     Reads “Via/Chemistry?” in
Wake
(1950)

162     happens me/happens to me     NC and all subsequent printings. But there is textual evidence that “to” is a deliberate omission. The word is omitted on early typescripts, on one Yale Za189 draft the word is typed in but then typed over as if to be omitted, and it is not on the Harvard typescript. It is on the Dartmouth page proofs, but is then omitted in the first edition.

163     
Voi ch’entrate
     Dante,
Inferno
, Canto III, l. 9.

170     bog/a bog     
Quarterly Review of Literature
(1951)