Paterson (Revised Edition) (32 page)

170     Norman Douglas … die     Weaver notes WCW’s amplification of this story in A 207.

171     the air … the glow     In
Quarterly Review of Literature
reads “the air above it through the glass room/having taken up the glow”

171     among/beside     
Quarterly Review of Literature

their talk/the talk     
Quarterly Review of Literature

171     Curie (the movie queen)     MGM’s
Madame Curie
, starring Greer Garson, was released in 1943.

171     Billy Sunday     Weaver 213 notes the background to the preacher’s 1915 visit to Paterson, and his baseball career.

172–74     Dear Doctor … A.G.     From Allen Ginsberg, March 30, 1950 (Yale uncat.), the first of three Ginsberg letters included in
Paterson
, see also pp. 193 and 210–211.

Like many of the prose passages in
Paterson
, the text of this letter picked up changes, mostly in small details, through the various retypings and editions of the poem. In the posthumous 1963 printing, with the original letter available at Yale, changes were made in the text in the direction of the original. But not all the differences were caught, some regularizing of Ginsberg’s punctuation and use of lower-case spelling departed even further from the original, and in the case of “dig” and “did” a change initiated by WCW was lost. On the grounds outlined in “A Note on the Text” I have returned the text to the version WCW submitted to the printer in the Harvard typescript (although incorporating the 1963 change in the identifying initials), and note below verbal printed variants and verbal differences from the original:

Doctor Original reads “Doctor Williams,” change marked by WCW on Za189.

once briefly All printings and typescripts Original reads “briefly once”

As to my history WCW omits the five lines that follow in the original, marking the omission on Za189, and adds these four words to the original’s next paragraph. The original reads “—my father is Louis Ginsberg, of whom you know. He would send his regards, if he knew I was writing, and also an invitation to come to supper, as we have bought a house in Eastside and are able to entertain for the first time in years. He was remarried last week.” WCW’s uncatalogued correspondence at Yale indicates that he met Louis Ginsberg in 1931.

schools/school     1963 and in the original

do there     All typescripts and printings, original reads “do here”

or lyric/of lyric     1963 and in the original

harking All printings and typescripts, original reads “barkening”

did     Original and 1963 read “dig,” but WCW marked the change on Za189, probably unfamiliar with the usage and thinking “dig” a typing error,

cadences All printings and typescripts, original reads “cadence”

an old     IST printed “on old,” possible uncaught error on the galleys

have real     IST and NC printed “did have real,” possible uncaught error on the galleys

bum of a paterson/bum of Paterson     1963, the original reads “bum of paterson”

A.G.     First edition and NC read “A.P.,” original reads “Allen Ginsberg.” Although this is a posthumous change, WCW used “A.G.” for the Ginsberg letter in Book V, pp. 210–211. The identification of Ginsberg’s letters in the first editions runs “A.P,” no identification, “A.G.” “WCW said ‘A.P.’ was for ‘A Poet,’” letter from Allen Ginsberg to Christopher MacGowan, July 29, 1992.

176     Levy     Weaver 214 identifies as H. Levy, author of .4
Philosophy for a Modern Man
(New York, 1938).

176     CASE … reprisal     From Joseph Felsen, Alfred J. Weil, and William Wolarsky, “Inapparent Salmonella Infections in Hospitals,” in
Journal of the American Medical Association
143 (29 July 1950), 1136. The passage from the original is cut out and pasted onto a sheet now with Yale Za189. WCW changed the initials, age, and date at a late stage, for the Dartmouth page proofs still read as the original. The original also reads “pediatrics” for “pediatric.”

177     On Friday … known     From WCW’s chapter on Columbus in his 1925
In the American Grain
, 25–26, which is in turn from Columbus’
Journals.
IAG reads “On shore I sent” and “I had ever seen….” The differences are in the early typescripts.

178     brow/brows     NC, but in no other printings, and not on any typescripts.

179     
les idées Wilsoniennes nous/gâtent
     Weaver 214 suggests a reference to
New Democracy
, 1 February 1934, which cited Woodrow Wilson on the control of credit. In his own copy of
Paterson
Thirlwall annotates “Fed. Reserve.”

180     Weaver 215 gives the citation,
Money
15,4 (June 1950), I. The original page is pasted in full onto a sheet among the Za189 typescripts, but WCW omits parts of the source in the drafts.

The original carries the headline “DO YOU FAVOR LENIN OR UNCLE SAM?” with a sub-headline “Our Treasury Officials Support A Legally Protected, Dishonest Finance Plan Which Will Accomplish Lenin’s Wish to Bankrupt America. There’s Still Time to Wreck Lenin’s Wish.”

WCW omits an introductory paragraph in the original, which reads:

Would you continue to support a strictly dishonest, legally protected finance system if you were convinced the writer has the solution to our financial and economic chaos? Would you continue to oppose a finance system based on the Constitution? Do you know that the Treasury officials are actually assisting the Russians by supporting a finance system which will eventually bankrupt us?

Following “more airplanes” the original adds: “They propose to foist Communism upon the people by force and nothing else.”

Between the
Paterson
version’s last sentence and “Enforce the Constitution on Money” (which is pasted in separately in Za189) the original has an additional 19 lines, including the assertion that following

the present dishonest, legally protected finance method …

1. The airplane would cost 1 million dollars.
   
2. The National debt would be increased 1 million dollars.
   
3. Federal taxes would raise to higher levels, so would prices.
   

WCW moves August Walters’ name from a by-line position following the subhead to the bottom of the page, and omits the full address the advertisement gives.

Other differences from the original, all present in the Za189 typescripts:

stronger than they/stronger than they are

Pay the manufacturer/Pay the manufacturers

deposits the/deposits this

his credit/this credit

Bankers make/Banker makes

only cost/actual cost

181     short of/out of     
Poetry New York
(1950)

Trade winds … drive/In
Poetry New York
reads “the/trade wind … drives”

sequestered/misspent     
Poetry New York

182     Release the Gamma/let out the Beta     
Poetry New York

out     .     out/out of     .     out     
Poetry New York

credit, stalled … pen/     
Poetry New York
reads:

Stalled in money

(concealing the generative)

that kills art     .     or buys it out of

poverty of wit, to win vicariously

the blue ribbon     .     for courage     .

Stalled in money

—the Congressional Medal

for bravery beyond the call of duty and

end as a bridge-tender

on government dole

Defeat may steel us

in knowledge; money     :     joke

to be wiped out at a stroke

of thought

182     just … NOWHERE     Ezra Pound wrote to WCW on 13 December 1949, concerning the juxtaposition in Book III of the Artesian Well chart against his 13 October 1948 letter (pp. 138–139): “2100 ft.     = thaz v. interestin’ page     .     but don’t prove there aint no water no where” (Yale uncat.). An early Za189 draft paraphrases the letter differently again. Following further comments from WCW, on 30 June 1950 Pound suggested “when artesian at 2055 000 in depth is undrinkable—aqueduct useful” (Yale uncat.). These exchanges on the virtues of aqueducts, and of their effect upon impurities in the water, continued into July. WCW’s side of the correspondence is at the Lilly Library, Indiana University.

182     Tolson and … Tate     Weaver 215 identifies and annotates the issue of
Poetry
(July 1950) that contains Melvin B. Tolson’s “From
Libretto for the Republic of Liberia
” and Allen Tate’s commentary.

183     Reuther     United Auto Workers’ leader Walter Reuther was wounded in his home April 20, 1948.

184–85     IN … cities     From a note sent by Ezra Pound [1950?]. Pound noted in a letter to WCW May 22, 1950, that he had not seen Book II of
Paterson,
and WCW forwarded a copy. Section I of Book II contains a passage on “invention” that resembles the style of Pound’s Canto XLV (see p. 50).

In the original “Will you” reads “Will yu” and “cities” reads “italian cities.” I have restored Pound’s spelling of “splendour,” which WCW retained on the typescripts but which was not reproduced on the galleys. WCW omitted a final line in Pound’s note: “there is ALso the motto to my Gaudier book/wunner ef yu evr seen that?” The two letters are at Yale.

185     cities/italian cities     
Quarterly Review of Literature

186     “The past … past,”     In a letter to his editor David McDowell, August 22, 1950, WCW writes: “To the Past and those that lived in the Past—which is a direct quotation from my paternal grandmother [Emily Dickenson Wellcome]—or rather a paraphrase of something she once told me, with a dirty look in her eye, in reply to an inquiry I once made of her” (HRC).

186     all but … river     “After Newark, the river enters Newark Bay, and merges with salt water,” George Zabriskie, “The Geography of Paterson,”
Perspective
, 6: 215. Zabriskie’s article, pp. 201–16, provides a useful summary of the path of the river and the history and geography of Paterson.

186–87     Jonatan … prominence     WCW’s notes in Yale Za188 identify the source as Nelson 345.

The first edition’s “Jonatan,” which I have restored, reproduces a printing error in Nelson, and is present in all typescripts. NC and all subsequent printings read “Jonathan.” The account appears as part of Nelson’s genealogy of the Doremus family.

Verbal differences from Nelson: the first occurs on what appears to be the transcription typescript, the other two with subsequent retypings, all filed with Za189:

someone is/somebody is

bayonetted/repeatedly bayoneted

attained/attained to

Gritie (all typescripts and printings) reads “Grietie” in Nelson.

187     an old friend … refreshed     An early Za189 typescript reads “When Pep West” which WCW revises to the printed version. WCW and Nathanael West edited the short-lived magazine
Contact
together in 1932. West worked at the Kenmore Hotel from 1927 to 1930, and the Sutton from 1930 to 1933, both in New York City. The prose is WCW’s.

188     Kill … us?     Probably WCW’s own prose. The passage undergoes revision in a number of the typescripts.

190     The greyhaired … secretary     A detail of WCW’s first air trip in 1941, see A 313–14.

192     The whereabouts … buried     WCW adapted a note apparently prepared for him by KH (a reference to this passage filed with
Za189
reads “see Kitty’s note”). An early draft identifies “Peter the Dwarf” as “Peter Van Winkle,” although WCW marked the change to “Peter the Dwarf” on a Za189 typescript. Pieter Van Winkle is the figure visited by General Washington (see p. 10) and a relative of the murdered John S. Van Winkle (see p. 197). The genealogy is in NS Volume II 7–8.

192–93     In a deep-set … river     Adapted, largely verbatim, from prose in scattered pages of Charles P. Longwell,
A Little Story of Old Paterson as Told by an Old Man
(Paterson, 1901). Here from pages 10, 9, 32, 10, 9, 10–11, 12 and 29.

193.     A print     Weaver reproduces the print opposite page 189.

193     Dear Doc … A.G.     From Allen Ginsberg, the letter is now at Yale (Yale uncat.). The letter is mistakenly dated by Ginsberg June 6, 1949, but is postmarked 7 June 1950. The second of three letters by Ginsberg in
Paterson
, see pp. 172–174 and 210–211.

As with the other Ginsberg letters, the printed version of this prose was amended in the 1963 and subsequent printings in the direction of reproducing the original more accurately, although the changes are incomplete and inconsistent. Most of the first edition’s differences from the original have as their source a retyping of what appears to be a transcription draft, the transcription draft being much closer to the original letter. There is no manuscript evidence that WCW initiated these changes, but in a subsequent draft he cut and pasted a version that contains the differences. He accepted the changes in all subsequent drafts and in both printings that appeared in his lifetime. For the reasons outlined in the “Note on the Text” I have returned to the version WCW submitted to the printer for the first edition, and note below the differences from the original and post-1963 printings.

Doc.     Original reads “Dr. Williams.”

which is in/which in     Original and 1963

neighborhood and/neighborhood     Original and 1963

the City/City     Original and 1963

the people     All printings, original has “people.”

see in/see it     Original and 1963

really/really at     Original and 1963

seen/known     Original and 1963

day—the look     All printings, original and earliest typescript read “day—that is really my main interest in anything—the look.”

A.G.     Added in 1963, see note to pp. 172–174.

WCW omits the final nine paragraphs of the letter, including AG’s request for his thoughts on Paterson declaring “a WCW week.” “We had Lou Costello week, we had Larry Doby week, why don’t we do something princely for a change?”

194     There were … days     Adapted, largely verbatim, from the prose in scattered pages of Charles P. Longwell,
A Little Story of Old Paterson as Told by an Old Man
(Paterson, 1901), pp. 29, 23, 11, and 15.