Shy of the Squirrel’s Foot: A Peripheral History of the Jargon Society as Told Through Its Missing Books

The Jargon Society, a boundary-pushing publisher of poetry and experimental writing, was founded by Jonathan Williams (1929-2008) in 1951. Jargon quickly gained a reputation as the home of the poetic and literary avant-garde, including noted midcentury poets like Charles Olson and Lorine Niedecker. Williams himself looms large in this story as the publisher at Jargon until his death, making this book as much about his life and work as the press he founded, which today operates through the Black Mountain College Museum in Asheville, North Carolina.

Andy Martrich authors this story in a manner befitting Jargon’s ethos of literary experimentation by focusing on the books the Society cataloged but never published. While it’s not uncommon for a small press to plan for books that don’t make it to publication, Martrich argues that Jargon’s incessant financial difficulties, coupled with Williams’s impressive network, makes its trail of unfinished projects unique and an ideal way to chronicle the press itself. Using archival research, interviews with volunteers at Jargon, and more, Martrich gives readers not only an intimate look into a Southern press and publisher but also an important history of modern and experimental literature in twentieth-century America. Shy of the Squirrel’s Foot includes an epilogue by Anne Midgette, an afterword by Nicole Raziya Fong, and Jargon’s complete annotated bibliography, which details every book the press published, compiled in one place for the first time.