Paterson

One of the masterpieces of modern American literature, William Carlos William's long poem, Paterson, originally published in five separate books between 1946 and 1958, is now made available in complete, one volume paperbound form. Dr. William's stated argument of Paterson, which is his own personal testament, thus "that a man in himself is a city, beginning, seeking, achieving and concluding his life in ways which the various aspects of a city may embody." Paterson is both a place (the New Jersey city near which Williams lived) and a man: the symbolic figure in whom the personal (the poet's own life) and the public (the history of the region) are combined. In its structure, Paterson, "follows the course of the Passaic River, whose life seemed more and more to resemble my own: the river above the Falls, the catastrophe of the Falls itself, the river below the Falls and the entrance at the end into the great sea." Book 5 affirms the triumphant life of the imagination, in despite of age and death.