Jonathan Williams, 1929-2008

Poet, publisher, photographer, hiker, essayist, critic, conversationalist, correspondent, conservationist, "dilettante true to his delicto," "truffle hound of American poetry," activist, amorist,
ENTHUSIAST.

literature—the way we ripen ourselves
by conversation, said
Edward Dahlberg . . .

we flower in talk, we slake
our thirsts in a brandy of heated speech, song
sweats through our pores,
trickles a swarm
into the sounding keyboard,

pollen falls
across the blackened paper . . .

always idle—before and
after
the act:

making meat
of vowels
in cells
with sticky feet

—"Enthusiast," in his Jubilant Thicket: New and Selected Poems
(Copper Canyon Press, 2005)