y." The world Williams chose to explore in this poem about "the myth of American power," added James Guimond, was one where "this power is almost entirely evil, the destructive producer of an America grown pathetic and tragic, brutalized by inequality, disorganized by industrial chaos, and faced with annihilation." Williams revealed "the elemental character of the place" in Book I. The time is spring, the season of creativity, and Paterson is struck by the desire to express his "immediate locality" clearly, observed Guimond. The process is a struggle: to know the world about him Paterson must face both the beauty of the Passaic Falls and the poverty of the region. In Book II, said Williams, Paterson moves from a description of "the elemental character" of the city to its "modern replicas." Or, as Guimond pointed out, from the "aesthetic world" to the "real material world where he must accomplish the poet's task as defined in Book I--the invention of a language for his locality.... The breakdown of the poet's communication with his world is a disaster," both for himself and for others. Williams himself, on the other hand, made his own advance in communication in Book II, a "milestone" in his development as a poet. A passage in Section 3, beginning "The descent beckons...," "brought about--without realizing it at the time-- my final conception of what my own poetry should be." The segment is one of the earliest examples of Williams's innovative method of line division, the "variable foot." To invent the new language, Paterson must first "descend from the erudition and fastidiousness that made him impotent in Book II," summarized Guimond. As Paterson reads--and reflects--in a library, he accepts the destruction in Book II, rejects his learning, and realizes "a winter of `death' must come before spring." Williams believed that "if you are going to write realistically of the concept of filth in the world it can't be pretty." And so, Book IV ...
