Paterson finds the tiny fragments of poetry which trickle through routine and rest in the crevices of ordinary life, swimming in the details of a particular place or person, hiding in patterns, in serendipity, and the largeness which affects the smallness of an individual. The feature evokes a stirring, patient kind of understated, suggesting there to be beauty found in rearranging the prosaic humdrum of mediocrity into pretty words, a sweet verse. The words written by Paterson (Adam Driver) are done so without a definable purpose. Paterson relishes in the pleasure of deconstructing his day to day with clunky metaphors and strangely profound prose. Every day is miles driven in a local bus blocks around a small town, strokes of a pen forming an ongoing love sonnet, and the patient words exchanged between a pensive man and his idiosyncratic, somewhat facetious lover.
Paterson's poetry is far from exceptional, it is pure and unadulterated, tranquil, free from pretense or any forged grandeur but more often than not it lacks the elegance and sophistication of published work. This is verse quite plainly coming from an ostensibly content man who desires nothing more than what he already has, a fascinating concept given the dull, uneventful and routine nature of his existence. He rises early, but not before first cherishing a few moments in bed with the sleeping silhouette of his beautiful wife, eats alone, scribbles a few meditative lines at his driver seat before being interrupted to start work. Throughout his day, he finds time to set ink to his small book of poetry, he listens in to the snippets life he can steal from the conversations of his passengers and the fragments of community and drama he encounters at the dive bar he frequents.
