Jubilant Thicket: New and Selected Poems

by Jonathan Chamberlain Williams, Jim Cory (Introduction)

Jonathan Williams founded The Jargon Society—a publisher dedicated to poetry, experimental fiction, photography and visionary folk art—and has championed the underdog, maverick and outsider in the arts for 50 years. He has also published over 100 of his own books, pamphlets and broadsides of poetry, essays and photography. Jubilant Thicket collects the best of his poetry and teems with the eccentric, strange and boundlessly authentic—neoclassical poems, social satire, musical suites and lyrics. There is spleen, salt and a delicious -sarcasm, as Williams finds inspiration in Mahler and Mojo Nixon, Blake and whimmydiddles. There is nobody quite like Jonathan “He is one of the few poets about whom it could be said, he has never bored a reader.”— Contemporary Poets “Of all the Black Mountain poets (teachers and disciples alike), Jonathan Williams is the wittiest, the least constrained, the most joyous.”— The New York Times “Jonathan Williams is himself a kind of polytechnic -institute, trained to write poems as spare, functional and alive as a blade of grass.”—Guy Davenport, from The Geography of the Imagination “Indispensable! . . . We need him more than we know.”—R. Buckminster Fuller Of the thousands of essays and reviews published about his work, Williams writes, “The best thing yet said about me came from an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. His letter ‘Thanks for writing all those kick-ass books.’” Jonathan Williams ’s most recent book is A Palpable Portraits of Genius and Solitude (Godine). He founded The Jargon Society in 1951, a publisher that, according to The New York Times , “has come to occupy a special place in the cultural life as patron of the American imagination.” He lives on Skywinding Farm in rural North Carolina.

Genres: Poetry

360 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

About the author

March 8, 1929 - March 16, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/boo...

Writer, photographer, and publisher. Founded the Jargon Society Press.

Reviews

[Brian Hart]

While the extensive references and non-English quotations leave me a bit lost at times, there's something about Williams' work that rewards those who persever. Elegant and word-drunk, sophisticated and just plain nasty. A good introduction. I read it once, then picked it up and read it again, as I'm sure I will again.