Paterson

Book 2 opens with Paterson climbing a hill in a park on a Sunday afternoon. He takes note of the limbs of the people, such as the “ugly legs of the young girls” and “men’s arms, red, used to heat and cold” (44) and of the rocky cliffs around him as he walks through forest composed of cedars and sumac. He pays special attention to natural features as part of a body and to the bodies of others around him. Just as in Book 1, brief sections follow one after another: A letter-writer becomes indignant at a lack of prior reply from the recipient, and collaged sections from the letter are interspersed throughout the rest of the Book. In 1880, singing societies from the town of Paterson were involved in a fatal altercation on a farmer’s property: The farmer, indignant about trespassing, shot one of the singers. This collaged section of the narrative is interrupted by verse lines about nesting birds.

Paterson leaves the path and walks into a field barefoot, where he struggles against the landscape. He scares birds which seem created from the earth itself. He sees a grasshopper the length of his boot and lets his mind wander to connect images of the grasshopper, love, light, and a stone he sees in the field.