A Publisher for Appalachia’s Outsiders, Mavericks and Neglected: The Jargon Society

The Jargon Society was founded as a small press that specialized in publishing eclectic and avant-garde works of poetry, fiction, photography, and Appalachian culture.  It was started by poet Jonathan Williams and artist David Ruff in a San Francisco Chinese restaurant in 1951 with the intention of printing fine-press editions of poetry.

Jonathan Williams (1929-2008), poet, publisher, and photographer, was often referred to as “the truffle hound of American poetry” due to his knack for identifying talented writers early in their careers.  Williams was a gifted poet himself and wrote or contributed to hundreds of books and pamphlets.  Among his interests were wordplay, found language, avant-garde poetry, folk arts, photography, and Appalachia.  David Ruff (1925-2007) was an American painter and print maker who taught himself how to set type and began a letterpress operation out of his San Francisco studio.

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Listen to Jonathan Williams reading his poems with comment in the Recording Laboratory, June 18, 1965, at the Library of Congress:

https://www.loc.gov/item/94838428/

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The core publications produced by the Jargon Society received a number and their first title, Garbage Litters the Iron Face of the Sun’s Child (1951), was labeled Jargon 1.  It’s a folded pamphlet with poetry by Williams and an etching by David Ruff, issued in an edition of 50 copies.  It appears that Jargon 1 was the only major collaboration between Ruff and the Jargon Society, though Ruff continued printing under his own imprint named after his studio, The Print Workshop, until 1955.

After the publication of Jargon 1, Williams returned to his native North Carolina to study photography at Black Mountain College, and it was there that he met the school’s rector, Charles Olson.  Olson, a poet himself, encouraged Williams to continue publishing, which he did, drawing from the rich cultural environment surrounding Black Mountain College.  Jargon 2, Joel Oppenheimer’s The Dancer, was published in 1951 with a drawing by fellow Black Mountain student artist Robert Rauschenberg.

Beginning in 1952, Jargon’s center of publishing moved to Germany when Williams was drafted into the U.S. military during the Korean War.  As a conscientious objector, he was placed in the medical corps and stationed near Stuttgart, where he found printers who could fulfill his design ideas.  During this period, Jargon publications note that they were printed in Stuttgart, or nearby in Baden and Karlsruhe.

In 1954 Williams moved to San Francisco and soon thereafter published his former college rector Charles Olson’s books of poetry:  The Maximus Poems / 1-10 (Jargon 9) in 1956, followed by The Maximus Poems / 11-20 (Jargon 24) in 1960.  The Maximus Poems are considered a major work of 20^th century American poetry and have influenced subsequent generations of writers.

Williams returned home to North Carolina and began splitting his time between there and Corn Close, a cottage he purchased in Dentdale, Cumbria, England.  Reuben Cox’s A Cottage in Dentdale (2015), Jargon 116, contains photographs and anecdotal stories about Williams and poet Thomas Meyer, Williams’ partner, and their time together at the cottage.  During this period, Jargon publications occasionally note that they were published in Corn Close and/or Dentdale.

In 1971, the Jargon Society published the first of three James Broughton titles: A Long Undressing: Collected Poems, 1949-1969, Jargon 55, featuring a portrait photograph by American photographer Imogen Cunningham.  Broughton’s exuberance earned him the moniker “Big Joy” from Williams.

 

Jargon’s most popular and financially successful publication was, surprisingly, Ernest Mickler’s cookbook White Trash Cooking (Jargon 101) which came out in 1986.  Mickler, a Florida native, collected photographs, stories, and recipes from people who shared a commonality with his northeast Florida upbringing and kept the text of the book in the dialect of that region.  The book landed in bookstores and received great reviews, including from New York Times literary critic Bryan Miller who said that it might be the most intriguing cookbook of the season.  Jargon had published 5,000 copies but received orders for 60,000.  Not able to keep up with the demand, Jargon sold the rights to the book to Ten Speed Press.  White Trash Cooking has been continuously in print for nearly 40 years.

 

Since its beginning, the Jargon Society published works of up-and-coming writers and photographers, most of whom were associated with Appalachia and Black Mountain College and later gained renown.  Some of these Include Lorine Niedecker, Alfred Starr Hamilton, Mina Loy, Ronald Johnson, Guy Davenport, Denise Levertov, Lyle Bongé, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, James Broughton, Kenneth Patchen, Doris Ulmann, Robert Creeley, and many others.

The success of the Jargon society as a publisher was largely the result of Williams himself.  He didn’t have a uniform aesthetic when producing books, preferring to craft something unique for each writer.  He mentored young poets, connected writers and artists for collaboration, and established space for their creativity.  After Williams’ death in 2008, Thomas Meyer donated the inventory and rights for Jargon to the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, which has continued publishing under the Jargon imprint.  After making this decision, Meyer is quoted as saying: “The Jargon Society has always championed outsiders, mavericks and the neglected, itself no stranger to same. Yet with the death of its founder, it seemed to me the time had come for the foundation to make some changes. The BMC Museum + Arts Center struck me as an appropriate compass to provide new directions. Shared histories, shared aesthetics, and shared missions. In short, a perfect shelter, a perfect match.”

 

The Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds a complete run of Jargon titles from 1 through 110, along with various pieces of ephemera, such as book prospectuses, newsletters, and postcards.  Additionally, in 2021 the division acquired three holograph books kept by Jonathan Williams.  These blank books recorded visits by friends to Williams and Meyers’ homes in North Carolina and Corn Close, Cumbria, as well as signatures and inscriptions of guests at various public events hosted by the Jargon Society from the 1960s to the 1990s.  These books also contain original art works, drawings, photographs, and poetry by the contributors, including Ansel Adams, Leonard Basin, Diane Wakoski, David Hockney, Aaron Copland, René Laubies, Victor Hammer, John Furnival, and many others.

 

These materials are available for research in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. For more information, send a query to the reference staff via Ask-A-Librarian.

 

Sources

Cox, Reuben.  Corn Close. A Cottage in Dentdale. Photographs by Reuben Cox. Essays by Thomas Meyer and Anne Midgette. (Preface by James Jaffe. Portraits by Mike Harding).  Green Shade, Salisbury, CT, 2015.

Jargon Society on Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jargon_Society

 

Further Reading

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center – https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/

Jonathan Williams: A Life in Pictures (website).  http://jacketmagazine.com/38/jw-life-pictures.shtml

The Jargon Society : A Checklist – http://jacketmagazine.com/38/jw-jargon-soc-check.shtml

The Jargon Society at Black Mountain College – https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/the-jargon-society