William Carlos Williams

This is a scene from the charming 2016 film Paterson (96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) about a bus driver and erstwhile poet named Paterson who lives in Paterson, New Jersey with his wife who dreams of being a country music star and opening a cupcake business.

 

This Is Just To Say

By William Carlos Williams – 1938

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

 

 

In 1926, William Carlos Williams wrote an 85-line poem entitled Paterson referring to that city in New Jersey as James Joyce had to Dublin, Ireland in his book Ulysses. In 1946 he published the first book of his epic poem Paterson that consisted of five books published separately in 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951 and 1958. Williams won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1949.

 

“We sit and talk,

quietly, with long lapses of silence

and I am aware of the stream

that has no language, coursing

beneath the quiet heaven of

your eyes

which has no speech”

― William Carlos Williams, Paterson

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