W. C. Williams "Paterson"

William Carlos Williams’ poem, “Paterson” begins with a quote that questions how the search for “Rigor of beauty” can ever be successful when the mind is stuck in “remonstrance.” In order to more clearly understand the intention of the quote, I looked up the words “Rigor” and “remonstrance.” The most encompassing definition I could find for “rigor” is “severity.” “Remonstrance” means to protest or object. With these definitions in mind, I interpret the quote to say, in my own words: A distinct understanding of beauty is the quest presented to the speaker. But how will any beauty be found when our minds--perhaps logical or rational or conventional thought processes--prevent us from being open enough to discover this organic kind of beauty?
The rest of the poem is an attempt to answer this question. The answer is not direct, though. It involves tracing the thought processes of the speaker: watching what happens in his head as he attempts to come up with an answer. I like to imagine that the dogs of the first stanza are meant to represent the speaker’s brain cells and receptors. At the initiation of the thought, a whole bunch of brain cells shoot out in the canals of the mind, chasing after any evidence in the landscape of the brain that would help them to answer the posed question. This is like the pack of dogs chasing the rabbit. Of course, at least one brain cell lags behind like the lame dog to scan the familiar area and find “a musty bone.” Perhaps the bone has been dug up and buried countless times before. It is so useless and harmful a distraction that its malnutrition handicaps the dog. It is “soured,/ is lost in the flux and the mind,/ distracted, floats off[…]” (32-34). It is the stale bone of ignorance.
In lines 28-30, the speaker says “In ignorance/ a certain knowledge and knowledge,/ undispersed, its own undoing.” In my own words, I interpret that to say: One’s certainty in the truth of one’s knowledge is an indication of one’s ignorance. The potential for supreme knowledge and truth goes unrealized, and perhaps is lost forever, when the mind is clouded with this unwarranted certainty. “Minds like beds always made up/ (more stony than a shore)/ unwilling or unable.” (51-53).
In my imagination, one of the speaker’s brain cells has journeyed farther than the others, and has encountered unfamiliar territory in the mind. The brain cell floats in a small submarine, rolling up and down on the river of thought, still searching valiantly for an answer to the question. The last four stanzas signal a shift in the direction of the poem. The submarine suddenly surfaces. It is “lifted as air, boated, multicolored[…]” (56). The journey has paid off. The brain cell has found a place where knowledge, “from mathematics to particulars--” (58) replenishes itself, “regathered into a river that flows” (60). This is an area not yet touched by ignorance. The very possibility of its existence relies on the fact that it can only be accessed on the journey away from ignorance.
At the end, the speaker’s quest has taken him to the beauty that has been “[…]locked in the mind past all remonstrance” (1).