Jonathan Williams

Jargon Society was the small press that Williams started in 1951, originally at Black Mountain College. Over the span of about fifty years, it published over 100 books featuring poetry, photography, and art, supporting writers overlooked or dismissed by mainstream publishers. Operating on almost no budget, it thrived largely due to Williams's relentless drive. Many poets now regarded as crucial — including Lorine Niedecker, Mina Loy, and Louis Zukofsky — found their first significant audiences through Jargon.

Black Mountain College was an experimental liberal arts school in North Carolina that operated from 1933 to 1957. In its later years, it became a vibrant hub for American avant-garde poetry, art, and music. Williams joined the college in the early 1950s and learned from Charles Olson, whose concepts about projective verse and viewing the poem as a field of energy influenced how Williams approached the line and the page. The friendships and artistic values he developed during his time there remained important to him throughout his life.

Short, sharp, and often humorously surprising. Williams had a fondness for wordplay, folk expressions, Appalachian dialect, and the knack for creating poems that end before you even notice they’ve begun. He wasn’t one for making grand declarations. His poems function like great jokes or striking photographs — they capture something particular and let that moment speak for itself.

That’s a real debate among those who appreciate this era of American poetry. We can easily gauge his influence as a publisher — without Jargon, many prominent poets would have had far fewer readers. His poetry also has a loyal audience, and some critics believe it’s been overlooked because his publishing efforts tend to steal the spotlight. He likely found this question irritating; he viewed both roles as part of the same mission.

Williams spent significant time in England, especially in the Yorkshire Dales, where he and his partner Thomas Meyer owned a home in Dentdale. He was well-connected within the British poetry scene and truly felt a connection to the landscape and culture of northern England. This time spent there is reflected in his poetry through place names, local dialects, and a walker's keen observation of the terrain.

He received a Guggenheim Fellowship and various grants throughout his career, but he never became a prize-circuit poet. Instead, his reputation grew through word of mouth, the loyalty of fellow poets, and the unwavering support of the Jargon Society. He was more recognized in specific literary circles than in the broader cultural landscape, and he appeared genuinely unfazed by it.

The collection *Jubilant Thicket: New and Selected Poems* (2005) is the best place to start — it spans his career and showcases a genuine variety, from playful to elegiac tones. After that, seeking out individual Jargon Society publications adds to the fun, even if they can be a bit elusive.