Standing Pat with Poeterson

Yesterday, I passed by the sparkle, dazzle, and spectacle of the glittering "La La Land" for the grit, heartache, and poetry of everyday life in the struggling industrial town of "Paterson." While I grew up in Paterson, I witnessed sides of it that I had not seen before, through the eyes of a poetic bus driver, his energetic dream-driven wife, his observant dog, and the muses of P-town's past poet William Carlos Williams. It is wonderful that the movies are reviving a place for musicals and romance, but it is possibly more amazing that there is a place for the poetry of common day-to-day life. In Paterson, the poetry can be tattered and destroyed, only to be reborn again.