The Run to the Sea. An Idyll

William Carlos Williams, the »forefather of modern American poetry« (H.M. Enzensberger), worked on his long poem Paterson from 1946 to 1956. The beginning of the fourth of the five books forms The run to the sea. An idyll. This is a dramatic poem, a three-handed play composed of dialogues, letter and lyrical passages, whose richness of form cries out to be staged. It tells the story of Corydon, an educated elderly lady, and Phyllis, a young girl who has come from the country to work as a masseuse in the city – New York. The third voice is that of Phyllis’s married lover Paterson. Here Williams followed his literary credo »no ideas but in things«. »All art is sensual«, he wrote »Listen! Never mind; don’t try to figure it out. Listen to it; let it come to you. Sit back, relax, let the thing spray in your face.« And: »Be patient that I address you in a poem, there is no other fit medium.«