Poetic Obituaries: If poetry is a sound, Jonathan [Williams]

made it. For years, he drove across America in a battered Volkswagen, its trunk full of boxes of books, and spread poetry--"our Johnny Appleseed," Buckminster Fuller called him. When he stood up to read--tall, imposing, masking shyness with a forbidding sternness--the poems became sound, rolling out with the rich savor of whisky and cigar smoke that colored his voice, and gradually sweeping away the reservations of listeners who, braced for Great Thoughts, found instead humor and homespun truths and even gleeful obscenity. You never knew what was coming.

from The Washington Post: Jonathan Williams, 1929-2008

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