In Book 1, which was originally published as a separate volume in 1946, William Carlos Williams introduces the main characters and themes which will recur throughout the rest of the text. The eponymous Paterson is the name both of a man and of a city in New Jersey, and throughout this section Williams draws connections between them: “the city / the man, an identity—it can’t be / otherwise—an / interpenetration, both ways” (3). Book 1 uses evocative imagery to create these connections, especially imagery of the body as landscape. Passaic Falls is introduced as the headwaters whose torrent creates a river that can be dangerous.

This section is collaged with verse poetry, letters, and stories about the inhabitants of Paterson throughout time; notably a poor shoemaker who discovers pearls in mussels, a man with an unusually long forehead visited by General Washington of the Revolutionary Army, a group of boys catching an enormous fish, the history of a mixed-race region called New Barbadoes Neck. Williams tells the story of Mrs. Sarah Cummings, who falls into the river below Passaic Falls and drowns. Next, he describes Sam Patch, a townsperson with substance use disorder who jumps into the falls as the town tries to raise a bridge to span the gap and later drowns jumping into Niagara Falls.