I just started in on William Carlos Williams's magnum opus. Since I just cracked it I'll probably pop in later with future thoughts as I work my way through it. My initial response is incredibly positive.

WCW has often left me a little cold for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Some of his early poems, which I gather are intended to be unadorned slice-of-life vignettes describing the everyday, strike me as pastoral-bucolic from today's standards. It may have once been that the red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water was an everyday occurrence, but in my postmodern world it's a rarity that borders on precious.

I do admire the vitality and clarity of his images, though, which at times flow like cold clear water and wash the senses with vigor. At times I'm in pure awe of his craft:

the sea is circled and sways
peacefully upon its plantlike stem

Who could fail to be moved by the beauty of such an observation?

Now I've begun Paterson and must say I'm quite dazzled by its opening salvos. The organizing structure of individual as city is expansive enough to be limitless in its compositional possibilities, and already he has made excellent use of both symbol and didactic history as fuel for his work. What he has not yet done is convey a persuasive sense of how his prosaic discursions relate to the architecture of the individual mind. It is interesting to read about the landing of a great fish or a preacher's wife who vanished off of a precipice, but how that pertains to Paterson as a symbol of an individual consciousness eludes me. I anticipate he will make this clear in time.