Jonathan Williams was an American poet, publisher, essayist, and photographer. He is known as the founder of The Jargon Society

The Jargon Society

The Jargon Society is an independent press founded by the American poet Jonathan Williams. Jargon has published seminal works of the American literary avant-garde, including books by Charles Olson, Louis Zukofsky, Paul Metcalf, James Broughton, and Williams himself, as well as sui generis books of...

, which has published poetry, experimental fiction, photography, and folk art for more than fifty years. He died March 16, 2008 in Highlands, NC from pneumonia

Overview

Based in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, and for many years also in the Yorkshire Dales in England, both Williams and his publishing venture had long been associated with the Black Mountain Poets

Black Mountain poets

The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...

. Among the press's offerings are works by Charles Olson

Charles Olson

Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...

, Paul Metcalf

Paul Metcalf

Paul Metcalf was an American writer. He wrote in verse and prose, but his work generally defies classification. Its small but devoted following includes Robert Creeley, William Gass, Wendell Berry, Guy Davenport, Howard Zinn, and Bruce Olds...

, Lorine Niedecker

Lorine Niedecker

Lorine Faith Niedecker was a Wisconsin poet and the only woman associated with the Objectivist poets...

, Lou Harrison

Lou Harrison

Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison...

, Mina Loy

Mina Loy

Mina Loy born Mina Gertrude Löwry was an artist, poet, playwright, novelist, Futurist, actress, Christian Scientist, designer of lamps, and bohemian. She was one of the last of the first generation modernists to achieve posthumous recognition. Her poetry was admired by T. S...

, Joel Oppenheimer

Joel Oppenheimer

Joel Lester Oppenheimer was an American poet associated with both the Black Mountain poets and the New York School. He was the first director of the St. Marks Poetry Project...

, Ronald Johnson

Ronald Johnson (poet)

Ronald Johnson was an American poet. He was born in Ashland, Kansas, graduated from Columbia University and lived in New York in the late fifties, wandered around Appalachia and Britain for a number of years, then settled in San Francisco for the next twenty-five years before returning to Kansas,...

, James Broughton

James Broughton

James Broughton was an American poet, and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance...

, Alfred Starr Hamilton

Alfred Starr Hamilton

Alfred Starr Hamilton was an American poet. A lifelong resident of Montclair, New Jersey, Hamilton contributed to many small presses, including Epoch, New Directions, Foxfire, New Letters, Archive, Poetry Now, American Poetry Review and Greenfield Review...

 and many other works by the American and British avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

.

Once described as a "a busy gadfly who happened somehow to pitch on a slope in western North Carolina," Williams was a living link between the experimental poets of Modernism

Modernist literature

Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...

's "second wave" and the unknown vernacular artists of Appalachia

Appalachia

Appalachia is a term used to describe a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S...

. Guy Davenport

Guy Davenport

Guy Mattison Davenport was an American writer, translator, illustrator, painter, intellectual, and teacher.-Life:...

 likened Williams' use of "found language" to the use of "found footage" by avant-garde filmmakers, as well as describing Williams as a species of cultural anthropologist

Cultural anthropology

Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...

. Williams for his part explained the fascination of such material in plainer terms:

The literary critic Hugh Kenner

Hugh Kenner

William Hugh Kenner , was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor.Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario on January 7, 1923; his father taught classics...

 described Williams as the "truffle hound of American poetry."

A longtime contributing editor of the photography journal Aperture, Williams lived in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina.

External links

• Jonathan Williams Tribute Page at the Electronic Poetry Center
• Tales of a Jargonaut an interview with Jonathan Williams by Jeffery Beam
• The Jargon Society links include current updates and musings from Williams
• Biography Page @ncwriters.org w/bibliography
• Tales of a Jargonaut the only slightly edited full Rain Taxi interview with Jonathan Williams by Jeffery Beam
• A Snowflake Orchard a personal history of Jargon by poet Jeffery Beam which appeared originally in the North Carolina Literary Review w/bibliography
• The Passing of a Poet: Jonathan Williams, 79, Avant-garde Poet, Publisher, and Photographer
• The Lord of Orchards: Jonathan Williams at 80, edited by Jeffery Beam and Richard Owens. A fulsome survey of Williams' life and work including some never before published photos by Williams, and many new and recovered essays about his life and work as a poet, photographer, critic, art collector, and publisher.
• A life in pictures: Jonathan Williams A series of photographs documenting Jonathan Williams' life