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seven | ross hair Jargon Society The Remote Relations of Lorine Niedecker and Jonathan Williams A certain remove seems to be the way I operate best. —Jonathan Williams (Prospect into Breath 54) We are the long range people. —Lorine Niedecker (qtd. in Corman 61) in beautiful enemies Andrew Epstein reassesses the Romantic notion of lyric subjectivity, arguing that it “should not be seen as an utterance issuing from an isolated subjectivity but as a social text, caught in a web of interpersonal and intertextual relations” (Beautiful Enemies 15). Epstein proposes this in relation to the first generation of New York poets whose socializing in various New York City coffeehouses, loft spaces, and bars, reified their sense of group identity and fellowship. Such venues are, Epstein suggests, “densely interwoven cultural, intertextual , interpersonal spaces” that ensure tangible, if often fractious, notions of poetic community (Beautiful Enemies 5). But where does a geographically remote poet such as Lorine Niedecker, who spent most of her life living and working in rural Wisconsin, fit in relation to such networks ? Frequently compared to Emily Dickinson, the enduring image of Niedecker as a solitary poet makes her particularly susceptible to the myth of “isolated subjectivity” that Epstein is keen to dispel. I want to suggest that far from perpetuating “the Romantic myth of the poet as solitary genius,” Niedecker in fact exemplifies how poetic community can occur outside of major metropolitan centers of activity (Epstein, Beautiful Enemies 10). To demonstrate how Niedecker does so, this essay considers her poetry in the context of the transatlantic milieu that published her—particularly the Jargon Society—and the influence 154 | ross hair Niedecker had on the poetry of Jargon’s founder, Jonathan Williams. As I discuss, Jargon was instrumental for what Peter Middleton describes as the “elective affinity between American and British poets, readers, and publishers” that helped “shape the reception” of an eclectic transatlantic poetry “society” within which Niedecker assumed considerable stature from the 1960s onward (“The British Niedecker” 248). Despite her relative autonomy from any group, even the Objectivists to whom she remained peripheral, Niedecker’s poetry, I propose, constitutes a complex “social text” that is defined by, and responsive to, a poetic “society” that claims no geographical center nor advances any specific group identity. By considering the tacit dialogues that Williams ’s poetry establishes with Niedecker’s, I want to argue that poetry itself provides a kindred space for otherwise isolated and, in the sense of being “remote from the centre” and “out of the way,” eccentric poets who adopt discrete positions within their immediate and literary communities. the name “jargon” was suggested by the painter Paul Ellsworth at the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1951, where Williams briefly studied. Far from being concerned with hermetic “jargon,” however, the scope of Williams’s press is open and inclusive, and has published a range of books, from Louis Zukofsky to Ernest Matthew Mickler’s White Trash Cooking. The social inclinations of Jargon became more pronounced in the 1960s when Jargon became “The Jargon Society.” It did so in order to become eligible for receiving government arts grants from funding bodies such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the John and Cara Higgins Foundation . Funding and private sponsorship have ensured a steady publication of Jargon titles, right up to Philip M. Jones’s Roadside Memorial Polaroids (2012), which was funded by private sponsors. Williams tells Robert Dana: “It seemed people would not give money unless they had particular tax benefits. Also, to get money out of the National Endowment or any of the foundations, you had to do this. So that made us become more social, then, than perhaps we had been before” (204). Thus, as well as being a way to secure funding, the addition of “Society” to Jargon Society | 155 Jargon’s name also reflects the press’s social inclinations. According to Williams, there has “always been kind of a group or community aspect ” to Jargon: “it’s not a one-man band, it’s a backwoods symphony” with “a lot of people helping me, you know, advisors, people writing letters” (qtd. in Dana 204). A Jargon letterhead from the mid-1980s emphasizes this, describing the press as a “Non profit, public corporation devoted to charitable, educational, & literary purposes” complete with an “EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,” “DIRECTORS,” “PRESIDENT,” and a number of “COHORTS,” including Basil Bunting, Guy Davenport, and John Furnival.1 This Anglo-American cohort is indicative of how Jargon was...

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