For the movie “Paterson,” about a poet named Paterson who lives in Paterson, N.J., the director Jim Jarmusch asked his old friend Ron Padgett, a poet from Oklahoma who lives in the East Village, for a few poems. Both men had studied poetry with Kenneth Koch at Columbia College, although not at the same time. Mr. Padgett, 74, who wrote three poems and provided four old ones for the movie’s main character, said the words flowed easily. “I realized I’ve been writing poems as one character or another for more than 50 years,” he said. He lives with his wife, Patricia Padgett, in the same railroad flat he found in 1967 and promised would be their home for no more than one year. They spend summers in northern Vermont. JOHN LELAND

POET’S ALMANAC The thing is, I don’t recognize Sunday as being all that different from any other day. I don’t have a job to go to. The sun comes up, the sun goes down.

TEA AND TOAST I wake up when I wake up. I get up and I tiptoe out into the kitchen and living room, my little writing area, and I make a breakfast for myself. And I have a cup of jasmine tea and a slice of toast.