Paterson

poetry by Williams

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Article History

Paterson, long poem by William Carlos Williams, published in five consecutive parts, each a separate book, between 1946 and 1958. Fragments of a sixth volume were published posthumously in 1963.

According to Williams, “a man in himself is a city,” and Paterson is both an industrial city in New Jersey and a character of that name. Paterson has a mosaic structure, with occasional passages of prose, including letters and a diary, integrated into the poem; it is written in Williams’s “variable-foot” free verse.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.