Williams, Jonathan

Elegies and Celebrations

Highlands, NC: Jonathan Williams, 1962. First Edition. Softcover. “Once here / my love / where a sun hung caught / in hemlock / and fiery wind came / washing up the creekbed / we lay / my love / on lichened rock, in pressures of / the booming summertime / at Scaly Mountain / under lightning we lay / my love / in vapor flashing, rains down on / the water/sand / (and turned in the current, alert, / and loved / til now; / when sun, once here, / may strike, / where ash is / thick, where we got up / where also the lightning / struck thru the face, / and it is dry, / my love.”--Jonathan Williams, “Our Dusk: That West.” Jonathan Williams (1929-2008) 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. A photographer and graphic artist, his books include An Ear in Bartram’s Tree: Selected Poems, 1957-1967 (1969), Strung Out with Elgar on a Hill (1970), Blues & Roots/Rue & Bluets: A Garland for the Southern Appalachians (1971), The Loco Logodaedalus in Situ (1972), Elite/Elate Poems (1979), and Get Hot or Get Out: A Selection of Poems, 1957-1981 (1982). Associated with the Black Mountain poets, Williams was inspired by the visual arts, music, and the natural world; he experimented with found poetry and at times illustrated his work. His interests included civil rights, Appalachia and the Appalachian Trail, folk arts, and avant-garde poetry. Through the relatively obscure but highly influential Jargon Society and Press, which Williams founded in 1951, he promoted the writings of such poets as Denise Levertov (1923-1997), Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970), Basil Bunting (1900-1985), Robert Creeley (1926-2005), Charles Olson (1910-1970), and Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978), as well as the art of outsider artists such as Thornton Dial and Howard Finster. Williams’s publishing selections for Jargon extended to Ernest Mickler’s 1987 bestseller, White Trash Cooking. Offered today is the 1962 collection of poetry, Elegies and Celebrations. Released initially as jargon (13b), Elegies and Celebrations is a collection of experimental, Black Mountain-inspired poetry. Perhaps Robert Duncan (1919-1988) sums it up best in his preface: “Prizefighters, winners, prizepainters, homeruns, everybody’s homesick soldier boy. “Whip/whap, that’s it” but “the eyes are the mirrors of the soul.” “The man in our hearts stands” "stifling all repulsion.” These poems come “across invisible mountains” ELEGIES & CELEBRATIONS; and declarations too then of occult allegiances. The accomplishd thing remains amazing: that this style permits busy effect, passionate utterance, cool and hot jive, right scattert insight, and nice discrimination to co-exist. Permits? demands. It is the demand that makes its path poetry. The collagist recognizes his sense of collage. I, who have searched for love thru poetry, find it here: painful as Truth is painful— “and with fact’s stroke it came up swirling,”; the “completely impossible” of the poem THE PROBLEM— and wish-full too “under lightning we lay” “suited to loneliness.” Such life in writing forces us, even as it touches us most intimately, to recognize that we share only here what is unique. There are “unrelieved facts” and sensualities. The smart enthusiasm and the cantus firmus: he insists. These poems outlive me as I read. They are not comfortable. The assertion by which the dilettante true to his delecto moves into the passion of beauty is the strength that moves us.” From the collection of scholar, poet and our dear friend Robin Eichele (b. 1941), noted Mimeograph Revolutionary & co-founder (with the late, great John Sinclair [1941-2024]) of the Detroit Artists’ Workshop. Signed & dated at first blank leaf in thin black ink by Robin Eichele: “Robin Eichele / 2-20-65.” Softcover in unprinted glassine dust jacket. Limited first edition, one of 750 copies, as stated at colophon. Book in relatively very fine condition with minor wear to fine edges, moderate smudging/scratching to front and back covers & spine; moderate discoloration due to age-toning to same. Dust jacket relatively near fine with significant wear to fine edges, two significant tears (one to front near bottom right, second at back near top), and some crinkling/smudging to front and back. Interior relatively fine with only mild age-toning to pages. Very Fine / Near Fine. [Item #8798]

Price: $40.00