["Paterson" is] epic in intent, if by "epic" one is willing to understand "the sustained handling of a society-enclosing subject matter." As such, "Paterson" is related to such poems as Pound's "Cantos," Eliot's "The Waste Land," and Crane's "The Bridge." If one may define traditional epic as "the celebration in narrative verse of great deeds performed by a single hero or set of heroes," this latter-day type of epic may be distinguished at once from the traditional by the fact that its development is not narrative but symphonic, and by the additional fact that time in this "modern" epic tends to become a continual present.

This modern epic is symphonic in its development because it does not tell a tale but, rather, orchestrates multiple themes of the human position…. [Its] subject is always in some sense what may be called "the racial memory"—the reflective conciousness in which...