Jonathan Williams (poet)
{{Short description|American poet (1929–2008)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=November 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Jonathan Williams
| image = Jonathan_Williams_1985.jpg
| alt = Portrait of Jonathan Williams
| caption = Jonathan Williams in 1985
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1929|03|08}}
| birth_place = Asheville, North Carolina
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2008|03|16|1929|03|08}}
| death_place = Highlands, North Carolina
| education = St. Albans School, Princeton University, Chicago Institute of Design, Black Mountain College
| occupation = Poet and publisher
| known_for = The Jargon Society press
| partner = Thomas Meyer
}}
Jonathan Williams (March 8, 1929 – March 16, 2008) was an American poet, publisher, essayist, and photographer. He is known as the founder of The Jargon Society, which has published poetry, experimental fiction, photography, and folk art since 1951.
Overview
Williams was born in Asheville, North Carolina, to Thomas Benjamin and Georgette Williams, and raised in Washington, D.C. He attended St. Albans School in Washington, and then Princeton University,{{Cite web |url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jonathan-williams |title=The Poetry Foundation |access-date=April 1, 2013 |archive-date=March 3, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303202938/http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jonathan-williams |url-status=live }} before dropping out to pursue the arts. Williams studied painting with Karl Knaths at the Phillips Gallery in Washington, D.C., and engraving and graphic arts with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in New York,{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/06/culture.obituaries|title=Obituary: Jonathan Williams|last=Hrebeniak|first=Michael|date=2008-06-05|work=The Guardian|access-date=2019-08-02|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}} followed by a semester at the Chicago Institute of Design. In 1951, he arrived at Black Mountain College to study photography with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind.{{Cite web|url=http://www.blackmountainstudiesjournal.org/volume3/3-2-ross-hair/|title=Jonathan Williams and Black Mountain by Ross Hair|website=BMCS|date=January 31, 2012 |language=en-US|access-date=2019-08-02}} At Black Mountain College, Williams met and was influenced by the College's rector, Charles Olson.
Also in 1951, Williams founded Jargon Books (later The Jargon Society) together with David Ruff, with the goal of publishing obscure writers.{{Cite journal|last=Schutz|first=Lacy|date=2017-07-26|title=Black Mountain Poetry|url=https://oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-580|journal=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature|language=en|doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.580|isbn=9780190201098}} Based in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, as well as the Yorkshire Dales in England, Jargon was long associated with the Black Mountain Poets. The press has published work by Charles Olson, Paul Metcalf, Lorine Niedecker, Lou Harrison, Mina Loy, Joel Oppenheimer, Ronald Johnson, James Broughton, Alfred Starr Hamilton and many other works by the American and British avant-garde. Since Williams' death, The Jargon Society has continued publication through the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.{{Cite web|url=http://jargonbooks.com/|title=The Jargon Society|website=jargonbooks.com|access-date=2019-08-02|archive-date=October 10, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181010175108/http://www.jargonbooks.com/|url-status=live}}
Once described as "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's "second wave" and the unknown vernacular artists of Appalachia.[http://www.ncwriters.org/services/lhof/inductees/jwilliam.htm Biography of Jonathan Williams] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060113072200/http://www.ncwriters.org/services/lhof/inductees/jwilliam.htm |date=January 13, 2006}}. Guy Davenport 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. Williams for his part explained the fascination of such material in plainer terms:
{{blockquote|Well, as you know, a lot of my poetry is found and that's, I think, because I think I'm quite a good listener and I'm willing to lay back and listen, and I think it's something do with living in the country. I mean, this place, Skywinding Farm, there are times when Tom Meyer and I will only see somebody from the outside world once or twice a week. And we've known each other so long that we don't talk as much as we might. Tom can talk up a storm, He's up there in the Duncan/Olson class. So I like to listen and I like to hear things, so if you listen carefully then you do find things. I do it all the time. I mean, you know the early book, Blues and Roots, which was done in the course of walking a big piece of the Appalachian Trail, I listened to mountain people for over a thousand miles and I really heard some amazing stuff. And I left it pretty much as I heard it. I didn't have to do anything but organize a little bit, crystallize it, you know. That's the thing I love about found material, you wake it up, you "make" it into something.}}{{citation needed|date=March 2025}}
The literary critic Hugh Kenner described Williams as the "truffle hound of American poetry."
Williams was also a longtime contributing editor of the photography journal Aperture.
Williams divided his time between Corn Close at Dentdale in England and Scaly Mountain, North Carolina. He died March 16, 2008, in Highlands, North Carolina, from pneumonia.[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/books/30williams.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Jonathan+williams&st=nyt&oref=slogin "Jonathan Williams, Publisher, Dies at 79"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200102230244/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/books/30williams.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Jonathan+williams&st=nyt&oref=slogin |date=January 2, 2020 }}, The New York Times article (March 30, 2008) He was survived by his longtime partner, Thomas Meyer.
Selected bibliography
- An Ear in Bartram's Tree: Selected Poems 1957-1967 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1969; New Directions, 1972).
- Mahler (Grossman/Cape Goliard Press, 1969).
- The Loco Logodaedalist in Situ: Selected Poems 1968-70 (Cape Goliard Press, 1971).
- Elite/Elate Poems: Selected Poems 1971-75 (Jargon Society, 1979).
- The Magpie's Bagpipe: Selected Essays (North Point Press, 1982).
- Blues & Roots/Rue & Bluets: A Garland for the Southern Appalachians, revised edition (Duke University Press, 1985).
- Jubilant Thicket: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2005){{Cite web|url=https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/jubilant-thicket-new-and-selected-poems-by-jonathan-williams/|title = Jubilant Thicket: New & Selected Poems by Jonathan Williams}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/williams_jonathan/index.html Jonathan Williams Tribute Page at the Electronic Poetry Center]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20060325010216/http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2003spring/williams.shtml Tales of a Jargonaut] an interview with Jonathan Williams by Jeffery Beam
- [http://jargonbooks.com/ The Jargon Society] links include current updates and musings from Williams
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20060113072200/http://www.ncwriters.org/services/lhof/inductees/jwilliam.htm Biography Page] @ncwriters.org w/bibliography
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070711133118/http://jargonbooks.com/jw_interview.html Tales of a Jargonaut] the only slightly edited full Rain Taxi interview with Jonathan Williams by Jeffery Beam
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070711132753/http://jargonbooks.com/snowflake1.html A Snowflake Orchard] a personal history of Jargon by poet Jeffery Beam which appeared originally in the North Carolina Literary Review w/bibliography
- [http://whitecrane.typepad.com/gaywisdom/2008/03/the-passing-of.html The Passing of a Poet: Jonathan Williams, 79, Avant-garde Poet, Publisher, and Photographer ]
- [http://jacketmagazine.com/38/index.shtml#jw The Lord of Orchards: Jonathan Williams at 80], edited by Jeffery Beam and Richard Owens. An appreciative 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.
- [http://jacketmagazine.com/38/jw-life-pictures.shtml A life in pictures: Jonathan Williams] A series of photographs documenting Jonathan Williams' life
- Jonathan Williams Photographs. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
{{Poets in The New American Poetry 1945–1960}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Jonathan}}
Category:Black Mountain College alumni
Category:American book publishers (people)
Category:20th-century American poets
Category:20th-century American male writers
Category:St. Albans School (Washington, D.C.) alumni
Category:Princeton University alumni
Category:Writers from North Carolina