Patterns — including yards of circles, dancing squiggles and twinned images — fill “Paterson,” creating a vibrant visual punctuation to the otherwise relaxed storytelling.

There is a tendency to sanitize bygone political eras in the retelling, to draw straight lines where squiggles belong.

And he based his own teaching on linear motifs — squiggles, circles and so on — derived from pre-Columbian pottery shards.