{"id":6642,"date":"2026-02-16T01:28:39","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T06:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=6642"},"modified":"2026-05-20T03:15:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:15:46","slug":"andy-martrich-shy-of-the-squirrels-foot-a-peripheral-history-of-the-jargon-society-as-told-through-its-missing-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2026\/02\/16\/andy-martrich-shy-of-the-squirrels-foot-a-peripheral-history-of-the-jargon-society-as-told-through-its-missing-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Martrich. Shy of the Squirrel\u2019s Foot: A Peripheral History of the Jargon Society as Told through Its Missing Books.<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Andy Martrich. Shy of the Squirrel\u2019s Foot: A Peripheral History of the Jargon Society as Told through Its Missing Books.<\/em><\/h1>\n\n
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Emma Marie Duke<\/a><\/div>\n\n
in <\/span>Book review<\/a>, <\/span>Reviews<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Andy Martrich. Shy of the Squirrel\u2019s Foot: A Peripheral History of the Jargon Society as Told through Its Missing Books<\/em>. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2024. 196 pages. ISBN 9781469682518. US $24.95 (paperback). <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Shy of the Squirrel\u2019s Foot: A Peripheral History of the Jargon Society as Told through Its Missing Books, <\/em>Andy Martrich takes on the story of Jonathan Williams, a poet, artist, and primary publisher of the small Jargon Society press in North Carolina during the second half of the twentieth century. The Jargon Society published books and pamphlets featuring writers, poets, and photographers who Williams deemed underrecognized. It is often associated with the Black Mountain poets, including Williams\u2019s mentor Charles Olson. Andy Martrich is himself a poet, archivist, and a co-publisher of H\u2019d\u2019ng Press, a small mixed-genre press in Philadelphia. In this book, he combines bibliography, literary history, and literary criticism with an innovative methodology: he forgoes discussion of the publications actually produced by the Jargon Society. Instead, Martrich argues that Jargon is best understood through projects that, for various reasons, were never completed. The book provides the first comprehensive bibliography of Jargon Society materials, including both completed and unfinished works. With its unique approach, careful bibliography, and clear prose, Shy of the Squirrel\u2019s Foot <\/em>will be useful to scholars of twentieth-century American poetry, as well as those interested in creative or poetic approaches to bibliography. Martrich leaves his reader with a forceful impression that absence deserves study as a poetic form in itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cmissing\u201d Jargon publications that organize Martrich\u2019s chapters are, in most cases, projects that proceeded far enough to receive a number in Jargon\u2019s publication planning but never made it to press. These works were collaborations, making each chapter a history not only of the work in question, but also the artistic relationship that led to its non-publication. Chapter 1 uses \u201cJammin\u2019 the Greek Scene\u201d to explore Williams\u2019s development as a poet through his complicated relationship with his Black Mountain College mentor, the poet and essayist Charles Olson. Chapter 2 explores Merle Hoyleman\u2019s \u201cLetters to Christopher,\u201d a \u201cmaverick\u201d long-form poem that gained contemporary praise but was stifled from publication by Hoyleman\u2019s struggles with paranoia (p. 61). Chapter 3 delves into Richard Craven\u2019s collaboration with Williams, \u201cNotches along the Bible Belt,\u201d a collection of religious ephemera about which Craven and Williams were both enthusiastic, albeit never at the same time. Chapter 4 uses \u201cThe Lyrix of Col. Hampton B. Coles (Ret.)\u201d to explore Tom Patterson\u2019s influence on Jargon in the mid-\u201980s. Chapter 5 is Martrich\u2019s full bibliography of Jargon works, which he compiled using both existing bibliographic checklists and his own archival research. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout, Martrich combines close reading with archival research and interviews. His close readings add depth to his analysis. In chapter 1, Williams\u2019s unpublished \u201cJammin\u2019 the Greek Scene\u201d poems help Martrich trace the author\u2019s hesitation to publish during a period when he \u201cwas coming into his own as a writer and publisher\u201d (p. 36). In chapter 2, Martrich makes use of Merle Hoyleman\u2019s papers, only recently available at the University of Pittsburgh, to offer a more nuanced account of the role of mental illness in her long-form poetry. Martrich also attempts to reconstruct the missing Jargon works as far as possible, often reaching beyond institutional archives. His research is patient, persistent, and creative. In chapter 3, he secures Craven\u2019s personal file of \u201cNotches\u201d-related ephemera by calling every Richard Craven in the phone book.      <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martrich carefully locates each major poet in terms of close or analogous contemporaries, making the book accessible to a nonexpert. The book\u2019s tone is academic, with sensibilities verging on the poetic. Often this poetic sensibility is a strength. It lends force to Martrich\u2019s close readings, especially of Hoyleman\u2019s \u201cLetters to Christopher.\u201d Occasionally, however, it leads to a looseness of association. The fourth chapter seems less clearly tied to the book\u2019s organizing principles, given that \u201cThe Lyrix of Col. Hampton B. Coles (Ret.)\u201d never received a Jargon number. The book\u2019s main title, a reference to Williams\u2019s poem \u201cMay,\u201d also sacrifices some clarity for the sake of poetry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This study\u2019s greatest strength is its exploration of margins and peripheries in the production of poetry. Martrich\u2019s focus on the peripheral suits his subject matter. Jonathan Williams sustained a reputation as a \u201ccustodian of snowflakes\u201d (p. 11), writing that he tried to \u201cprotect the margins, because that\u2019s where I live\u201d (p. 88). Williams\u2019s impulse to emphasize the marginal over the known often became, as Martrich narrates, an obstacle to the success of the press. It seems likely, however, that Williams would have approved of Martrich\u2019s approach to a history of the Jargon Society. Indeed, it is possible to read each chapter as an exploration of material at the margins of poetry itself. The missing Jargon books find poetry in (respectively) found sayings, mental illness, newsprint ephemera, and song lyrics. To some extent, each work takes ephemerality as both a subject and a poetic form. In this, the works\u2019 ultimate absence is oddly appropriate to their content. Martrich\u2019s book invites the reader to consider whether missingness might belong in both an archival and a poetic category of its own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emma Marie Duke, University of Texas at Austin<\/p>\n\n\n

20th century<\/a>, <\/span>bibliography<\/a>, <\/span>poetry<\/a>, <\/span>publishing<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This history of the small Jargon Society press combines bibliography, literary history, and literary criticism to demonstrate that absence deserves study as a poetic form.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":6668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"wp-custom-template-post-template-reviews","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888,1887],"tags":[1897,1905,1948,1953],"class_list":["post-6642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-reviews","tag-20th-century","tag-bibliography","tag-poetry","tag-publishing"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6642"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6896,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6642\/revisions\/6896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}