Mr. Jarmusch’s movie is a draw for out-of-towners, but Paterson’s most recent favorite son and homegrown poet is rapper Fetty Wap — 26-year-old Willie Maxwell II, who grew up in the Fourth Ward neighborhood. Mr. Maxwell’s 2014 runaway hit single “Trap Queen” references trap music, known for its synthesized, complicated beats and gritty lyrics that both celebrate and lament inner-city life.

Mr. Maxwell recorded a music video last year for another single, “Wake Up,” featuring marijuana and a stripper, not unusual subject matter for a music video. But it was filmed in Paterson’s Eastside High School, which Mr. Maxwell once attended. At the end of “Wake Up,” a tattooed woman takes an apple off the teacher’s desk and uses it as a pot pipe. Paterson officials were not amused and launched an investigation last year into how a stripper pole and platform made it into the school. A principal took the fall and was suspended, and the approval process for filming on school property has now been tightened.

If he were still alive, Paterson poet Ginsberg probably would have appreciated Mr. Maxwell’s work. When he returned home to Paterson in 1966 for a poetry reading, Mr. Ginsberg told the crowd that he had just smoked pot at the falls to better appreciate their beauty. The mayor told the police to issue a warrant for his arrest. So Mr. Ginsberg didn’t make a public appearance in Paterson for another 14 years.

Unlike Mr. Ginsberg, Mr. Maxwell has remained a strong presence in his hometown, distributing turkeys at Thanksgiving and hanging out in the neighborhood.

And you can’t change what’s understood, ayy

And if it’s all good it’s all good, I’ma rep my ‘hood, ayy

Paterson today is not just rough around the edges, but throughout; gang violence and drug deals are common, its smokestacks dormant, bail bond shops numerous and the banks of the Passaic dotted with tents from the homeless living where the Lenape once fished.

On my most recent drive there, I heard on the radio that a spotted Savannah cat someone was keeping as a pet had been set loose on the city streets. Thankfully it was caught before I got out of my car.

The large, spotted cat slinking past littered streets and aluminum sided homes, was like something one of the city’s poets might include in a line. The wild power of nature bumping up against the industrial landscape that was once America.