{"id":15917,"date":"2018-03-12T08:07:49","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T12:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=15917"},"modified":"2018-03-12T08:07:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T12:07:50","slug":"jonathan-williams-lord-of-the-orchards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/jonathan-williams-lord-of-the-orchards\/","title":{"rendered":"“Jonathan Williams: Lord of the Orchards”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wish I could be at\u00a0Scuppernong Books\u00a0<\/a>in Greensboro NC, for editor Jeffery Beams, and contributors Alex Albright, Thorns Craven, Neal Hutcheson, & Tom Patterson\u2019\u00a0presentation of their excellent book\u00a0Jonathan Williams: Lord of the Orchards<\/em><\/strong> on\u00a0Thursday, March 15, 7pm. JW is one of the great neglectorino poets of the 2nd part of the 20C. One of the best ears & finest eye I know of. If you can\u2019t be there get the book. Here\u2019s how Jefferey Beams announces the reading:<\/p>\n

\n

Jonathan Williams\u2019 work of more than half a century is such that no one activity or identity takes primacy over any other\u2014he was the seminal small press publisher of The Jargon Society; a poet of considerable stature; book designer; editor; photographer; legendary correspondent; literary, art, and photography critic and collector; early collector and proselytizer of visionary folk art; cultural anthropologist and Juvenalian critic; curmudgeon; happy gardener; resolute walker; and keen and adroit raconteur and gourmand.<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 refined decorum and speech, and his sartorial style, contrasted sharply, yet pleasingly, with his delight in the bawdy, with his incisive humor and social criticism, and his confidently experimental, masterful poems and prose.<\/p>\n

His interests raised \u201cthe common to grace,\u201d while paying \u201cclose attention to the earthy.\u201d At the forefront of the Modernist avant-garde\u2014yet possessing a deep appreciation of the traditional\u2014Williams celebrated, rescued, and preserved those things he described as, \u201cmore and more away from the High Art of the city,\u201d settling \u201cfor what I could unearth and respect in the tall grass.\u201d Subject to much indifference\u2014despite being celebrated as publisher and poet\u2014he nurtured the nascent careers of hundreds of emerging or neglected poets, writers, artists, and photographers.<\/p>\n

Recognizing this, Buckminster Fuller once called him \u201cour Johnny Appleseed\u201d, Guy Davenport described him as a \u201ckind of polytechnic institute,\u201d while Hugh Kenner hailed Jargon as \u201cthe Custodian of Snowflakes\u201d and Williams as \u201cthe truffle-hound of American poetry.\u201d Lesser known for his extraordinary letters and essays, and his photography and art collecting, he is never only a poet or photographer, an essayist or publisher.<\/p>\n

This book of essays, images, and shouts aims to bring new eyes and contexts to his influence and talent as poet and publisher, but also heighten appreciation for the other facets of his life and art. One might call Williams\u2019 life a poetics of gathering, and this book a first harvest.<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jeffery Beam\u2019s over 20 works include\u00a0The Broken Flower<\/em>\u00a0(Skysill, 2012),\u00a0The New Beautiful Tendons: Collected Queer Poems 1969-2012<\/em>\u00a0(Spuyten Duyvil, 2012),\u00a0Gospel Earth<\/em>\u00a0(Skysill, 2010), the CD\u00a0What We Have Lost\u00a0<\/em>(Green Finch, 2001), the Carnegie Hall premiered song cycle\u00a0Life of the Bee<\/em>\u00a0with Lee Hoiby (Albany Records\u00a0New Growth, 2001<\/em>),\u00a0An Elizabethan Bestiary: Retold<\/em>\u00a0(Horse & Buggy,\u00a01999), and\u00a0Visions of Dame Kind<\/em>\u00a0(Jargon 113, 1995).Composers Holt McCarley and Steven Serpa are working on other songs and song cycles.\u00a0\u00a0Other JW works include the memorial quote book\u00a0A Hornet\u2019s Nest<\/em>, the\u00a0NC Literary Review<\/em>\u00a0essay \u201cA Snowflake Orchard and What I Found There: An Informal History of the Jargon Society\u201d, and the\u00a0Rain Taxi<\/em>\u00a0interview\u00a0Tales of a Jargonaut<\/em>. Forthcoming is\u00a0Spectral Pegasus\/Dark Movements<\/em>, a collaboration with Welsh painter Clive Hicks-Jenkins (January 2019), and an online chapbook Don\u2019t Forget Love, <\/em>a poem sequence of desire, grief, loss, and spiritual transformation in the tradition of Indian Bhakti, Anna Akhmatova, and Edna St. Vincent Millay (soon). He is poetry editor emeritus of\u00a0Oyster Boy Review<\/em>, a retired UNC-Chapel Hill botanical librarian, and resides in Hillsborough, NC.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jonathan Williams: Lord of Orchards (Paperback)
\n<\/a><\/strong>By Jeffery Beam<\/a> (Editor), Richard Owens<\/a> (Editor)
\n$30.00
\nISBN:<\/strong> 9781632260871
\nAvailability:<\/strong> Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
\nPublished:<\/strong> Prospecta Press \u2013 September 26th, 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wish I could be at\u00a0Scuppernong Books\u00a0in Greensboro NC, for editor Jeffery Beams, and contributors Alex Albright, Thorns Craven, Neal Hutcheson, & Tom Patterson\u2019\u00a0presentation of their excellent book\u00a0Jonathan Williams: Lord of the Orchards on\u00a0Thursday, March...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1455,908,42],"tags":[1973,442],"class_list":["post-15917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-presentation","category-celebration","category-essays","tag-jeffery-beams","tag-jonathan-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15917"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15921,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15917\/revisions\/15921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}