The Jargon Society is an independent press founded by the American poet Jonathan Williams

Jonathan Williams

Jonathan Williams or Jon Williams may refer to:*Jonathan Williams , Welsh antiquary*Jonathan Williams , American businessman, military figure, politician, writer and engineer...

. Jargon has published seminal works of the American literary avant-garde, including books by Charles Olson

Charles Olson

Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...

, Louis Zukofsky

Louis Zukofsky

Louis Zukofsky was an American poet. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.-Life:...

, Paul Metcalf

Paul Metcalf

Paul Metcalf was an American writer. He wrote in verse and prose, but his work generally defies classification. Its small but devoted following includes Robert Creeley, William Gass, Wendell Berry, Guy Davenport, Howard Zinn, and Bruce Olds...

, James Broughton

James Broughton

James Broughton was an American poet, and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance...

, and Williams himself, as well as sui generis

Sui generis

Sui generis is a Latin expression, literally meaning of its own kind/genus or unique in its characteristics. The expression is often used in analytic philosophy to indicate an idea, an entity, or a reality which cannot be included in a wider concept....

books of folk art such as White Trash Cooking.

Though most of Jargon's writers are either cult figures or genuine obscurities, the books themselves are often intricately designed deluxe editions. Guy Davenport

Guy Davenport

Guy Mattison Davenport was an American writer, translator, illustrator, painter, intellectual, and teacher.-Life:...

 described the Jargon Society as "a paradoxical fusion of fine printing and samizdat

Samizdat

Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...

diffusion."