A palpable elysium: Photographs

by Jonathan Williams

With photos and text, Jonathan Williams (poet, publisher, and raconteur) pays tribute to heroes of the spirit from Paul Strand and Buckminster Fuller to Wendell Berry and James Laughlin.

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

First published October 1, 2002

Reviews

[Paul Secor · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you open this book at random, you'll find photographs of Lorine Niedecker, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Harry Partch, Basil Bunting, Aaron Siskind, Stevie Smith, and Booker Ervin with Kenneth Patchen - standing outside of the Half Note - just to mention a few. Along with these, you'll find photographs of the graves of Jelly Roll Morton, Walt Whitman, Kenneth Grahame, and Charles Parker, Jr. - again to mention a few. Also included are photographs of so-called "outsider artists" (a term used in the introduction that I wouldn't normally use) - Harold Jennings, Vollis Simpson, and Georgia Blizzard -once again, to just name a few.

If these names are familiar to you, you'll no doubt want to get this book to see the photographs. If these names are unfamiliar to you, you may want to get this book to see Mr. Williams' photographs and to read his fascinating stories about and commentaries on the subjects. You'll probably find any number of new paths for your attentions to follow.

[Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a picture of the Shadows-on-the-Teche in this book, an antebellum home right down the block from my parents' house. My mother worked in an office upstairs there for most of my early childhood, and I recall playing the part of a member of the Weeks family in some sort of colonial-Williamsburg-type tour of the grounds. I think my lines were to do with breaking my arm. I remember vividly the door Williams writes of, but was too young to know the names Henry Miller or Gertrude Stein. Apparently, they were among the guests there.

Williams makes me proud to be a Southerner-- though of course I was never ashamed of it.

[Maria Hrickova · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.4, 5 for Thomas Merton's photo

[Jacob Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book.

[Luke Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

A commonplace book by a nonauthor Johnathan Williams (he was a publisher, photographer, and poet). It’s obvious that he’s, here, a general fun-haver. He hails from Black Mountain College, and networks from there too, which is why the subjects of his photography in this book are so interesting to read about. He’s something of a Boswell about the BMC’s leading lights. Most subjects are American folk artists from areas extending north of the Smokies and Shenandoah region and into the Berkshires. Mountainfolk. They are not profiled, but rather given written appreciations which are all flights of fancy: poems, rants about baseball, anti-modernist screeds, and meditations on how they were photographed. On the cover is a high contrast photo of James Laughlin, power and founder of New Directions. Both men are cultural explorers who seek and promote vagabonds, farmer-poets, conversationalists, and the like.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book of portraits, accompanied by anecdotes, poetry, and memories the author/photographer has from meeting the artists, poets, and composers he features in the pages. Most of them are connected to him in some way, most from the era when he was at Black Mountain College through the ten years afterwards. I had seen this book at the Black Mountain College Museum and was struck by it then, and enjoyed reading it more closely. The portraits, though, are the thing.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes you wish you paid more attention to writing as a craft. Also makes you want to take out a well-worn map and visit all the "outsider" people and places Williams describes in stunning personal visual and literary vignettes. It's a shame most of them are no longer alive. We'll just have to discover our own! The photos are so interesting. Many of them were taken in the 1950s - 1970s but you would never know if you didn't look at the dates.

[chris]

Garden of monsters. ♡