JONATHAN WILLIAMS — poet, essayist, photographer, and for more than 50 years the publisher of Jargon Books — died this past March at 79. He excelled at everything he did, and if you were interested in what he did and got in touch with him, he met your passion with passion. He published beautifully designed books by Charles Olson (under whom he studied at Black Mountain College), Mina Loy, Robert Creeley, Larry Eigner, Lorine Niedecker, and Thomas Meyer. His own poems are quick and droll and show a great appetite for the odd and out of the way. In 2002, David R. Godine published his book of photographs A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude, with subjects ranging from Kenneth Rexroth and Buckminster Fuller to the graves of Jelly Roll Morton, Erik Satie, and Vincent van Gogh, accompanied by Williams’s commentary. After you Google Williams and Jargon Books, that volume is a good place to begin.
WILLIAM CORBETT’s latest book of poems, Opening Day, has just been published by Hanging Loose Press.
Related:
Frank Carlberg | The American Dream, Portland Music News: April 10, 2009, Portland music news: March 13, 2009, More 
- Frank Carlberg | The American Dream
Other jazz musicians have set the poetry of Robert Creeley to music. Here poetry takes on the form of incantation in the repetition of Creeley's short, oblique verses.
- Portland Music News: April 10, 2009
We have a tentative street date for cheek-metal purveyors PIGBOAT 's new album, Float: April 21, with a release show later that week, April 25, at Geno's
- Portland music news: March 13, 2009
Pianist/composer FRANK CARLBERG releases his new The American Dream with a show at Woodfords Church April 23.
- Mixed book bag
It looks like a good season run-up to beach reads, with new fiction from Denis Johnson and Aleksandar Hemon, biographies of Gabriel García Márquez and Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John Updike's final collection of poetry.
- Review: My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poems of Jack Spicer
Spicer believed that words are magic, that they have the power to "do" good and harm to people.
- And here's the verse part
I think it was Bashō who said, "Yankees suck three ways. So hard. So bad. Wicked bad."
- Warring with words
Five local poets are heading to West Palm Beach, Florida, to represent Maine in the 2009 National Poetry Slam during the first week of August. The event has taken place in a different city every year since 1990; in 1995, Maine took fourth place, and last year the team split the field and placed 36 out of 80.
- Tall tales
This fall brings fiction and poetry lovers new treats from old friends.
- True romance
Bright Star is the best movie ever made about John Keats, the great Romantic poet who died at the age of 25. According to the Internet Movie Database, however, it is also the only one.
- Learning curve
Maine novelist teases our brains
- Sweet fallout
Philip Whalen (1923–2002) is a great American poet.
- Less
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Books
, Media, Books, Kenneth Rexroth, More
, Media, Books, Kenneth Rexroth, Elizabeth Bishop, Poetry, Book Reviews, Erik Satie, Buckminster Fuller, Jorie Graham, Charles Olson, Less
