Journeys in the Land of Oz Is this object as exciting as a new Oz book used to be? I know of no better test. (Williams Parson 374) Jargon's real history began at Ben Williams' knee, where an enthralled Jonathan listened to John Charles McNeill's Lyrics from Cottonland, and Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus stories. (Skelt 46) Such stories led to other great works of children's literature - the Oz books, Wind in the Willows, Dr. Doolittle, and The Hobbit. From these writers, Williams moved to American fantasts H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, which led him to Ben Abramson's Argus Bookshop where he stumbled upon the work of Kenneth Patchen, Rexroth, and Henry Miller. (Cory 1) The discovery of New Directions books through these writers led Williams to blame James Laughlin, New Directions' publisher, in a 1981 Conjunctions essay for "much of my literary madness." (Williams Bottom 3) The year 1950 found Jonathan working as a typist for Patchen. Already, however, in 1946, he had begun writing. At the National Cathedral School (the Williams' lived in Washington, D.C. for many years), he wrote as editor of the St. Alban's News, whose advisor, Ferdinand Ruge, demanded "precision, fact, and clarity." (Williams Cloche 340) Entering Princeton in 1947, Jonathan found the academic track stifling. He wrote in a self-interview, "I clearly did not want to become a Byzantinist in the basement of The Morgan Library; or an art critic for The New Yorker; nor did I want to live in the world of competitive business." (Williams Jonathan C. 89) Escape, much to his parents' dismay, was inevitable and leaving Princeton in his sophomore year he studied painting at the Phillips Gallery with Karl Knaths, later joining Bill Hayter's Atelier 17 in Greenwich Village to study etching, engraving, and printmaking. By now the presentation of the poem on the page (influenced by Blake, Patchen, and Miller) had become of major import, and the Chicago Institute of Design seemed a logical place to study photography and bookmaking. Here, again, Jonathan found the commercial focus too confining, and his interest in photography deepened. Photographer Harry Callahan, a professor at the school, unable to allow a lower-classman into his seminars, suggested that Williams go to Black Mountain that summer (1951) to study with he and Aaron Siskind. The decision was made. Jonathan found himself inspired by a fellow student at Chicago, Paul Ellsworth, and they spent many hours together debating the connections between the visual and literary arts. Jargon owes its name to Ellsworth who frequently used the word in conversation. Red/Gray (Jargon 3, 1951), a collaboration between Ellsworth and Williams, was the second Jargon published at Black Mountain. In it, Ellsworth writes, "if I can say anything abt (sic) JARGON it is our CAPACITY towards the involvement in our work. a (sic) thing permissible cannot be pure... It is refusing to be put in a pocket that can give the flow to this life - CAPACITY! ...KEEP SURROUNDED AS LONG AS POSSIBLE - DO IT! - DARE!!! & then the magnificence & the magic will occur." Ellsworth defined Jargon as his "own speech. My language, as opposed to the tribe's language." The concept ignited Jonathan. The dictionary offered further encouragement: jargonelle - a spring pear in France, jargon - the language of the infant before learning social conventions, jargon - French, the twittering of birds. (Dana 203) Twittering birds was it. Before leaving for Black Mountain, Jonathan set off for San Francisco to meet with Rexroth, Miller, and Patchen, all with whom he had been corresponding. Rexroth's enthusiasms concerning the enhancement of words through visual dimensions were to play an important role in the events about to take place. (Alpert 57) In San Francisco, Williams and David Ruff, an etcher and friend of Patchen, printed Jargon's first publication, fifty copies of a broadside poem of Jonathan's, "Garbage Litters the Iron Face of the Sun's Child," a title Williams now heartily decries. It's worth noting that Jonathan's official bibliography lists three previous self-published works, two from 1950, and one from 1951 - a flyer for an exhibition of his paintings and graphics, and the other consisting of two poems and collages. (Jaffe 1) Jonathan enrolled for the Fall 1951 semester at Black Mountain after attending the summer session of the same year. Before he was drafted that winter he began studies with Charles Olson. Black Mountain's obsessions with intuitive seeing, the process of learning by doing, the importance of community to artists, and the interrelationships of art forms, took visceral form in Olson, a physical and intellectual giant. (Harris 182, Dawson 7-9) Olson, as a literary man, and Black Mountain's Utopian vision were major influences on Jargon's credo. (Dana 204) Olson convinced Williams to give up other art forms for writing and publishing. (Skelt 47-48) At Black Mountain students were encouraged to publish, using the school's printing press. Olson's efforts to promote printing have been acknowledged as a catalyst for the revival of the small press movement in America. (Harris 197) Jargon has been the most lasting result, including its own inspiration to countless other small presses. The Dancer (Jargon 2, 1951), a broadside collaboration between poet Joel Oppenheimer and artist Robert Rauschenberg, Red/Gray, and The Double-backed Beast (Jargon 4, 1952), poems by Victor Kalos with drawings by Dan Rice, all students, soon appeared. By then Williams was committed, confirmed by the lack of publishing opportunities for Olson's poems. (Dana 192) "Jargon Books quickly declared their own terms: each of them would tie a knot in the far-flung network of American culture. The business at hand was not the 'elite,' but the neglected; not the 'far-out,' but the overlooked." (Williams Jargon Society catalog 1987 5) During this time, Olson and Robert Creeley had begun The Black Mountain Review, as a response to Cid Corman's magazine, Origin, which was loosely associated with the college. The Review, in retrospect, of immense importance to the American literary arts, was never successful and folded by the seventh issue. (Anderson 253-255, Harris 201) By then Jonathan had served his army stint in the medical corp as a conscientious objector, but not before publishing four more Jargon titles with the benefit of a $1500 inheritance from a friend. He returned to Black Mountain to find himself appointed its official publisher. Unfortunately, the school was closing. (Anderson 260) The small bequest from Charles Neal put Jonathan in a dilemma. "In my mind, I had three choices: (1) buy a Porsche automobile; (2) buy a Max Beckmann portrait; (3) start publishing books. Idiotic from the beginning, I opted for #3 and have been an aristocratic, cranky beggar ever since." (Williams Jonathan C. 89) A ten minute walk from the hospital where Jonathan was stationed in Stuttgart, he found the printshop of Dr. Walter Cantz, one of the best printers in Germany, who printed the first volume of Olson's Maximus Poems (Jargon 7, 1953). Another printer in town printed Jonathan's first book, Four Stoppages/A Configuration (Jargon 5, 1953); a printer in nearby Karlsruhr published Patchen's book Fables (Jargon 6, 1953) and Robert Creeley's The Immoral Proposition (Jargon 8, 1953). These works set the standard for small press and letterpress publishing in America, initiating the careers of some of American's finest modernist poets. The love affair with Olson's influence could not last. Olson, a complicated and demanding teacher, wanted to control Jonathan's choices, and thought many of the early publications were a waste of money. (Alpert 58-59) However, the "reckless and doomed" (Williams A Complete 2) young publisher realized he had to go his own way. So began the career of this "unreal publisher, dedicated to books that could not be sold to much of anyone." (Johnson 225) Bones from the sky: one young Jargonaut's schooling  The right thing said at the right time in the right way, will almost never be the popular thing at the popular time in the conventionalized way. -- Idries Shah in Seeker After Truth An old Turkish proverb states: "If the prayers of dogs were answered, bones would rain from the sky." Meeting Jonathan and becoming a "Jargonaut" has been fortuitous in many ways. Through Jargon I have gained the friendship and advice of writers Michael Rumaker, James Broughton, Thomas Meyer, and Hilda Morley; scholar Douglas Chambers of the University of Toronto; publishers Leverett T. Smith, Jessica Bayer and Jay Bonner; artists Georgia Blizzard and Elizabeth Matheson; and harvested the "influence" of Lorine Niedecker, Joel Oppenheimer, Stevie Smith, Thomas A. Clark, Simon Cutts, and Ronald Johnson. Other experiences such as trips to Canada, England and France, and exposure to the critical ideas of Dahlberg, Zukofsky, and Olson, I also owe to Jargon. To be befriended by Jonathan and Jargon is to enter a party where Samuel Palmer hobnobs with Charles Ives, Yma Sumac consorts with Thelonnius Monk - the pleasures of the book engulfed by the digitals of disc. From the beginning (Grade 7) I wanted to write poems that were necessary, but found myself drawn to modes and subjects unfashionable and avant-garde, concerned with essentials that seemed alien to the marketplace. In junior high I was already exploring the Modernist authors represented by the Beat Movement, publishers like New Directions and Grove Press, Marianne Moore, Dylan Thomas, e. e. cummings, and listening to blues and gospel "looking for signs." I began to prefer poetry in which the world revealed more than it seemed, more than just what I wanted it to reveal, more than the obvious correspondences, more than an accumulation of everyday objects, hopes, fears, and experiences. To be a Gay Southern lyrical metaphysical Nature poet (as opposed to a Gay political, narrative, straight, or confessional one) is to choose (or have chosen for one) a sort of invisibility. My life as a poet has been spent, in many ways, deliberately reclusive, like Jonathan's; but a writer's goal is to communicate - how to have both was a puzzle Jargon has helped me unravel. On November 22, 1982 after two years of exchanged postcards and letters between Jonathan and myself, my partner and I sat through a reading at the old North Carolina Museum of Art in partial celebration of Jonathan's receipt of the North Carolina Award in Fine Arts. This was not the first time I had heard him read, although he has no memory of coming to UNC-Charlotte in 1972 to do so. I've set aside questions of whether he did or didn't. I wrote it down in my notebook, even, but it wouldn't be my first experience outside of Time, events true to me even if others have no recollection. Ten years had passed since this earlier real or psychic event, and I had grown very little in my ability to comprehend or open myself to the "stuff" I thought Jonathan "passed off" as a poem. Jonathan's "overly" refined, yet ornery, bearing and physical size further intimated and confused. His postcards had been friendly and learned, inviting and funny, initiated by a simple message of brotherhood - "Nice to see there is someone else on the firmament of Tarheelia besides Tom Meyer and myself who have published in Winston Leyland's magazine."*** The museum reading frustrated and engaged me - the antithesis of what I felt poetry was, and yet at other times offering poems of deep, even mystical praise. I realized in the days following that Jonathan had demonstrated to me, through poems, my own experience of the Southern - its raptures and its barbarisms. After the reading we went out with another friend for drinks. By evenings' end my 29 year old brain, with its solid but un-Princeton-like public school education, its 1970's anything-goes attitude, reversed poles more than once. This was to be a common experience during the next twelve years as my friendship, and apprenticeship, with Jonathan and Jargon continued. This particular night, my obsessions with Robert Bly and the Deep Image, with Surrealism, Symbolism, and Natural Mysticism met a formidable foe. What was to culture from my natural inclinations, the influences above, and the injection of the Black Mountain and Objectivist viruses, was a pagan lyricism, a species of wisdom where perception overshadowed depiction, where absorption defined form. A poetic father in the flesh. I had hoped for, but never expected one. I imagined Yeats, or Sitwell, or Blake. I got two "Williams boys," William Carlos and Jonathan, unrelated by blood, but brothers in the spirit - practical, earthy men, more worldly than I, who saw the "Thing," meaning not, of course, the "Thing" we have poorly comprehended from the elder Williams' poem, but rather his correctly understood "through metaphor to reconcile/the people and the stones./Compose. (No ideas but in things) Invent!" Through the two Williams' I began to understand ways of making the subconscious event vital in the real one, what Anais Nin called "the sensory, emotional way we perceive experience," or W. C. Williams' "added intelligence," exploding Time, abolishing Space, hearing the rubbing together of the two - the cricket legs of poetry. When I first heard, first saw, Jonathan's concrete and found poems (for example, Eat 300 Feet emblazoned on that first postcard), my prudish internal critic rebelled. There's beauty in the world, why proclaim such inanities when there are hymns to be sung? When I finally allowed myself to Listen to the poems, to See them, and after rereading other poems in An Ear in Bartram's Tree, Elite/Elate Poems, and Loco Logodaedalist in Situ, such as the elegiac poems of Blues and Roots, I discovered through the conversation between these two modes of poetic thought, the dance, the auditory imagination, essential for me to understand Jonathan's poems and my world. These poems moving from the formal to the earthy and back loosened my own aesthetics. Jonathan's cool, mordant wit - his nonsense sense - allowed me entrance to a music for which my eye and ear had not been trained. Colonel Jonathan Williams, homeboy aristocrat, demonstrated in his person, his work, his life, the contradictions which also ruled me. The poetics of the "New American Poetry," of Black Mountain and Objectivism grafted themselves onto my pagan lyrics. My preacherly Calvinist tongue found a meeting ground in the Highlands. I was not much impressed, then, with the quality of gay poetry being published (I'm still not), and was desperate for poetic models unlike the fine, but too formal, James Merrill and Richard Howard. Whitman, Jean Genet, and Adrienne Rich were teaching me many things, but I needed a model closer to home. Jonathan's uncompromising gay male affection, without the rant and rage of Ginsberg, affirmed my own poetic ambitions - to be a poet, a human being first - to be gay because it was integer. At five I was collecting books already, and the book as totem, as work of art, as beautiful object, had become part of that acquisitiveness. By time I met Jonathan I had collected many small press books, but never before had I seen books like Jargon's, in which the sense was so carefully visioned into the book. The unfulfilled publisher, the eager writer, and the greedy collector all came together. To hold a Jargon book in hand was to understand the meaning of "the book," to confirm that a poem was more than words on a page. Jonathan has often described how books spoke to him, "They made me read their books. They made me buy their books. They made me put them on shelves and treat them as sacred objects. The unique books of childhood...Well, I wanted to make more children's books." (Dana 193) I, too, had a shelf of "magic" books I protected as quasi-religious texts/objects. My association with Jargon has been somewhat like a private Black Mountain. Jonathan, Calvinist preacher that he is, too, has spared no opportunity to expose and introduce me to work which could strengthen my vision. In one evening at Skywinding I might look through his unpublished photographs of Black Mountain, spend hours reading books from the voluminous shelves; discuss Steuben glass, George Dureau photographs, or Ming porcelains; listen to Bruckner, Paco Peña's Misa Flamenca, Kinky Friedman, or Earl Wild's transcriptions of Gershwin. Jonathan has been a demanding but fatherly teacher; his first inscription to me, "Astonish me!" Oftentimes I have heard repeated Robert Duncan's dictum: "Responsibility is to keep the ability to respond." And, just as frequently, Sparky Anderson's "What was was was! What is is is!" A line from The Empire Finals at Verona stays with me: ah, art is fro- zen Zen) At the same time Jonathan has indulged my reverence for Plath, Rilke, Doris Lessing, Merwin, Louise Glück, Jack Gilbert, James Wright, and Sufism without judging me crossly for admiring writers or ideas which he may or may not respect, or may or may not violate his aesthetic. He is one of the funniest writers we have, while I am much too serious - much to learn there. We have been blessed in friendship by the common appreciation of food, Nature, music, male beauty, and the chthonic - although I have been a less than willing student of Carolina basketball, of pigskin, and the curve ball. Finally, Jonathan's letters and essays, his observations and assessments, have informed, educated, and changed me in ways both subtle and dramatic, providing directions for poetic and personal exploration. He has guided by example, discouraging my idiocies with benign, yet firm, neglect or a quick jab, and helping shape my enthusiasms when praise was due. I am only one of a slew of artists, either famous or completely unknown (who perchance will remain so), whom he and Jargon have heartened.

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