I once saw Jim Jarmusch at Emo’s on Sixth Street in Austin, Texas.
We were both watching Daniel Johnston, and his silver hair gave him away.
Fast forward a decade and a half, and now I sit alone in an arthouse cinema
Watching his newest creation, Paterson, and wondering where it came from.
Was it thoughts of William Carlos Williams & his wheelbarrow glazed with rain
water? Or other poets from the Garden State: Whitman, Ginsberg, Moore.
Or has he fallen for Adam Driver, like the rest of cinema has?
His happy, brooding bus driver with a ceaseless need to write poetry
Has much in common with Bukowski, save the swearing, gambling, drinking.
Still, he is magnetic in a most perplexing way.
This isn’t the slowest movie of the last twelve months
(That honor goes to Certain Women, a hidden gem in an ugly year)
But it takes its time and honors Paterson, the character and the place,
in lingering over city streets and simple conversations.
Is there there a deus ex machina? It doesn’t matter.
Does it take an eternity for even a bit of conflict to make it on the screen? Yep.
I forgot that Jarmusch doesn’t care for boring realism or paced plotting.
He mediates, and we with him, on a world that could be but too often isn’t.
Which isn’t to say there aren’t golden moments to be found among the rest.
Are those the two young actors from Moonrise Kingdom, sitting on the bus,
Discussing an Italian anarchist? Yes, please and thank you.
Arthouse fan service never tasted so good.
This might have been a bad idea, to write a poem for a movie review,
but I once saw Jim Jarmusch at Emo’s on Sixth Street in Austin, Texas.
I swear.