Jonathan Williams; Last Surviving Member of Black Mountain Poets

Jonathan Williams cultivated the esoteric, the excluded and the exquisite in his tripartite career as a poet, publisher and photographer. He gave up the lures of urban life to direct an influential small press in rural North Carolina and was the final living member of the celebrated Black Mountain school of poetry. He was 79 when he died of pneumonia March 16 at Highlands-Cashiers Hospital in Highlands, N.C.

Mr. Williams studied at the short-lived but culturally significant Black Mountain College in North Carolina and was the last surviving writer who had been published in a notable 1957 anthology of Black Mountain poets. He established his secondary career in the 1950s as the publisher of such leading poets as Charles Olson and Kenneth Rexroth.

Mr. Williams published more than 100 volumes of poetry during his life, including "Jubilant Thicket" (2005), a monumental collection of more than 1,000 of his poems. He applied the idea of "found art" from the visual arts and music and often incorporated mountain-folk vernacular, humor and snippets of overheard conversations in his poetry.

"He always said it was like finding the poems in a field," said his companion and business partner, Thomas Meyer.

Typical of his style is "Aunt Dory Ellis, of Penland, Remembers When She Fell in Her Garden at the Home Place and Broke Her Hip in 19 and 56," whose title contains nearly the same number of words as the poem itself

the sky was high,

white clouds passing

by, I lay

a hour in that petunia patch

hollered,

and I knew I was out of whack

Not content to be merely a poet and publisher, Mr. Williams took countless photographs of people, landscapes and architecture over the years, collecting some of his portraits in the book, "A Palpable Elysium" in 2002. He was also a leading critic and collector of "outsider art," made by rural eccentrics and people in institutions.