A man of diverse interests and talents, a champion of the avant-garde, Jonathan Williams once listed his occupations as "poet, publisher, designer, essayist, iconographer." He has also been described as "a busy gadfly who happened somehow to pitch on a slope in western North Carolina." Born in Asheville, he has spent much of his life on Skywinding Farm near Highlands. He was educated at St. Albans School, Princeton University, and Black Mountain College, and also studied art and design at the Institute of Design in Chicago.

In college Williams became interested in the rebellious and experimental poems that came to be labeled Beat poetry. Drawing on a wide variety of subject matter—jokes, politics, and other topical themes, as well as universal ones, Williams calls himself a "visual poet" and often illustrates his poems with pictures or cartoons. His poetry derives from music and painting (including a series of poems written as spontaneous reactions to Mahler's symphonies), from a concern for ecological sanity, and from a sense of social outrage.

He has been strongly identified with the Black Mountain group of poets who have experimented with subject matter, form, word combinations, and mood evocation. Much emphasis is placed on wit, whimsy, and the combination of visual image and words to create desired impressions. He employs unexpected puns, repeated syllables, and word extensions. Although often critical of the American middle class, Williams delights in mountain speech and traditions, frequently quoting hill folk in his poems and essays.

His more than fifty published books include An Ear in Bartram's Tree (1969), Blues and Roots/Rue and Bluets (1971), The Loco Logodaedalus in Situ (1972), and Elite/Elate Poems (1979). Among his many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry, numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, honorary degrees, and the 1977 North Carolina Award in Fine Arts.

In 1951, Jonathan Williams founded Jargon Press to bring out works by then-neglected poets, especially those associated with Black Mountain College. His self-proclaimed mission: "To keep afloat the Ark of Culture in these dark and tacky times!" He went on to become one of the most active small publishers in the United States. Known as "the truffle-hound of American poetry," he has rooted out and published such zesty writers as Charles Olson, Kenneth Patchen, Denise Levertov, Paul Metcalf, and many others.

A serious gardener and hiker, Williams has written often about his walks on the Appalachian Trail and in England, where he spends part of each year. He has taught at several universities, and has been poet-in-residence at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. New York Times critic John Russell said of him, "This master of anathema has also a sense of wonder and awe at human quality, at the surviving marvels of landscape on both sides of the Atlantic and at the metaphoric power of both words and music."

Poems from The Language They Speak is Things to Eat
(UNC Press, 1994)

An Aubade from Verlaine’s Day                    for Alfred Stieglitz    the cloud in my head    wide to the edge of the world    the level cloud    that fills the Valley of the Little Tennessee    from Ridgepole to Rabun Bald    the laughter of    the Lord God Bird    Who pecks    berries    from the    dogwood    makes these two clouds    one, one eye    open My Quaker-Atheist Friend, Who Has Come to This Meeting-House since 1913, Smokes & Looks Out over the Rawthey to Holme Fell    what do you do    anything for?    you do it    for what the mediaevals would call    something like    the Glory of God    doing it for money    that doesn’t do it;    doing it for vanity,    that doesn’t do it;    doing it to justify a disorderly life,    that doesn’t do it    Look at Briggflatts here . . .    It represents the best    that the people were able to do    they didn’t do it for gain;    in fact, they must have    taken a loss    whether it is a stone next to a stone    or a word next to a word,    it is the glory-    the simple craft of it    and money and sex aren’t worth    bugger-all, not    bugger-all    solid, common, vulgar words    the ones you can touch,    the ones that yield    and a respect for the music . . .    what else can you tell ‘em? Daddy Bostain, the Moses of the Wing community Moonshiners, Laments from His Deathbed the Spiritual Estate of One of His Soul-Saving Neighbors    God bless her pore    little ol    dried up    soul!    jest make    good kindlin wood    fer Hell . . . Aunt Dory Ellis, of Penland, Remembers When She Fell in Her Garden at the Home Place and Broke Her Hip in 19 and 56    the sky was high,    white clouds passing    by, I lay    a hour in that petunia patch    hollered,    and knew I was out of whack Miss Lucy Morgan Shows Me a Photograph of Mrs. Mary Grindstaff Spinning Wool on the High Wheel    Miss Lucy tells that one day    a visitor asked Mrs. Grindstaff    “What are you doing?”    she said “Spinning.”    the tourist said    “Why doesn’t it break?”    she said “Because I don’t let it.”    the charred heart does not break in Appalachia, they    have not let it . . .    the loom hums    there

Blues & Roots, Rue and Bluets: A Garland from the Appalachians. New York: Grossman, 1971.

Dementations on Shank's Mare: Being "Meta-Fours in Plus-Fours" and a Few "Foundlings" Collected from Frambles (and Drives) in Herefordshire, Gwent, Powys, Avon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Cumbria, and North Yorkshire. New Haven, Conn.: Truck Press, 1988.

Descant on Rawthey's Madrigal: Conversations with Basil Bunting. Lexington, Ky.: Gnomon Press, 1968.

An Ear in Bartram's Tree: Selected Poems, 1957-1967. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969.

Eight Days in Eire, or, Nothing So Urgent as Manana. Rocky Mount: North Carolina Wesleyan College Press, 1990.

Elegies and Celebrations. Highlands, N.C.: Jargon, 1962.

Elite/Elate Poems: Selected Poems, 1971-75. Highlands, N.C.: Jargon Society; Frankfort, Ky.: Gnomon Distribution, 1979.

The Empire Finals at Verona. Highlands, N.C.: Jargon, 1959.

Le Garage Ravi de Rocky Mount: An Essay on Vernon Burwell. Rocky Mount: North Carolina Wesleyan College Press, 1988.

Get Hot or Get Out: A Selection of Poems, 1957-1981. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1982.

In England's Green & (A Garland and a Clyster). San Francisco: Auerhalm Press, 1962.

Lines about Hills above Lakes. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.: Roman Books, 1964.

The Loco Logodaedalist in Situ: Selected Poems, 1968-1970. New York: Cape Goliard Press, 1971.

The Lucidities: Sixteen in Visionary Company. London: 1968.

The Magpie's Bagpipe: Selected Essays. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1982.

Mahler. London: Cape Goliard Press; New York: Grossman Publishers, 1969.

Metafours for Mysophobes. Twickenham, Middlesex, Engl.: North and South, 1990.

Portrait Photographs. Frankfort, Ky.: Gnomon Press, 1979.

Quote, Unquote. Berkeley, Calif.: Ten Speed Press, 1989.

Shankum Naggum. Rocky Mount: Friends of the Library, North Carolina Wesleyan College Press, 1979.

Strung out with Elgar on a Hill. Urbana, Ill.: Finial Press, 1970.

Super-Duper Zuppa Inglese: (and Other Trifles from the Land of Stodge). Belper, Engl.: Aggie Weston's Editions, 1977.

Untinears & Antennae for Maurice Ravel. St. Paul, Minn.: Truck Press, 1977.

Mr. Williams has also been a frequent contributor to poetry journals and other literary periodicals.

Additional information on Mr. Williams can be found in:

Bassett, John E. "Jonathan Williams (1929- )." In Contemporary Poets, Dramatists, Essayists, and Novelists of the South. Edited by Robert Bain and Joseph M. Flora, 525-534. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994.

Corbett, William. "A Quarter Century of the Jargon Society: An Interview with Jonathan Williams." In The Art of Literary Publishing: Editors on Their Craft, edited by Bill Henderson, 116-133. Yonkers, N.Y.: Pushcart Press, 1980.

Hallo, Anselm. "The Pleasures of Exasperation." Parnassus 1 (Fall/Winter 1972): 188-194.

Jaffe, James S., comp. Jonathan Williams: A Bibliographical Checklist of His Writings, 1950-1988. Haverford, Pa.: James S. Jaffe Rare Books, 1989.

Smith, Leverett T. "Twenty-Seven Batting-Practice Pitches for the John Kruk of American Letters: An Interview with Jonathan Williams." In North Carolina Literary Review 2 (1995): 98-111.

Links to further information:

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