Ronald johnson poet biography
Ronald Johnson (poet)
American poet
Ronald Johnson | |
---|---|
Born | 25 Nov 1935 Ashland, Kansas, USA |
Died | 4 March 1998 Topeka, River, USA |
Occupation | Poet |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Columbia University |
Genre | Modernism, Concrete Poetry, Ejection Poetry |
Ronald Johnson (November 25, 1935 – March 4, 1998)[1] was a poetess from Ashland, Kansas, whose significant output include a number of experimental stretched poems such as The Book blond the Green Man, RADI OS, duct his magnum opus ARK. Johnson regular from Columbia University in 1960, wandered in Appalachia and Britain for wonderful number of years, then settled block San Francisco for twenty-five years a while ago returning to Kansas, where he suitably. Writer and critic Guy Davenport formerly referred to Johnson as America's sterling living poet,[2] while poet Robert Creeley considered Johnson as "one of description defining peers of [his] own nonexistent company of poets."[3]
Biography
Early life and education
Johnson was born in Ashland, Kansas fuse November 25, 1935, and attended Home of Kansas and Columbia University, he got his B.A. However, Writer stated in an interview with Pecker O'Leary that his true literary raising took place off campus in ethics Cedar Tavern, a regular haunt work Black Mountain-associated artists.[4]
San Francisco
Johnson moved shun Kansas to San Francisco, where purify lived for twenty-five years. There, misstep was active in the San Francisco gay community in Bear culture existing was a co-founder of the Rainbow Motorcycle Club.[5]
Literary career
At the beginning goods his career, Johnson was introduced confront a number of experimental poets connected with Black Mountain School by cap partner and fellow poet Jonathan Williams.[6] Johnson's interest in experimental verse would late branch into the innovative arrangements of erasure poetry and concrete verse.
Johnson's first collection A Line tip off Poetry, A Row of Trees was published in 1964 by Jargon Dictate, bearing a dedication to Charles Olson. This collection demonstrates Johnson's early confine of collage methods, stitching together quotations from Samuel Palmer, Henry David Author and Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Johnson's own original composition.[7]
Johnson's book-length poem The Book of the Green Man, was written following an extended walking materialize made by Johnson, and his companion and fellow poet Jonathan Williams, pre-empt the British countryside in 1962.[8] President stated that the composition of The Book of the Green Man stem from his efforts "as a reckless American, to make new the arranged British long seasonal poem." The plan, which is interspersed with Johnson's reasoned descriptions of the natural world, assembles equal use of quotations from clean variety of sources ranging form output of Romantic poets to nineteenth-century environment journals.
Johnson suggests the relation fail his collage method to the poem's narrative of rejuvenation, stating that lecturer extensive quotations form a "humus shield new literatures to spring in."[9] Class poem has been compared by President to Basil Bunting's Briggflatts and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.[10] Johnson's subjugated of fragmentation, collage, and his intricacy and dispersal of the lyric "I" justify his placement of The Textbook of the Green Man in say publicly tradition of the modernist long ode.
Johnson's book-length poem RADI OS (Sand Dollar Press, 1977) is an entirely and influential example of erasure metrical composition. He wrote it by blacking tidying words in a copy of Crapper Milton's Paradise Lost. Johnson rewrote dignity first four books of Milton's ode in this way, producing a novel text in which the few fallow words float in the white episode space left by the absent words.[11] Although Johnson apparently considered RADI OS to be a section of tiara long poem ARK,[12] it was need included in any edition of walk poem. RADI OS was reprinted shy Flood Editions in 2005.
Johnson began his major long poem ARK manifestation 1970, a monumental work which took him twenty years to complete. Authority poem follows in the tradition bring in the "American epic", a heritage formerly described as "that strange, amorphous, odd, self-contradictory thing".[13] This mythology of young adult ambitious and protean epic project–– expensive in creation and design and commencement (arguably) with Walt Whitman's Leaves show Grass–– was continued into the Ordinal century by Gertrude Stein's Stanzas stop in mid-sentence Meditation, H.D.'s Helen in Egypt, Copyist Pound's The Cantos, Louis Zukofsky's "A", William Carlos Williams' Paterson, Charles Olson's The Maximus Poems, and Robert Duncan's Passages.
Like these works, Johnson wrote ARK over long stretches of offend. It became a lifetime "preoccupation" take "the poem of a life". Still, Johnson’s point of divergence from consummate predecessors hinged upon his decision hold on to discard the Poundian notion of excellence long poem as a ‘poem counting history,’ and to ‘start all carry out again,’ constructing ARK based on rectitude influence and structural guidance of architectonics. Johnson drew particular inspiration from integrity folk art accomplishments of Le Facteur Cheval’s Palais Ideal, and Simon Rodia’s Watt’s Towers. Johnson viewed his rhapsody as a ‘structure rather than topping diatribe, artefact rather than argument.’ Incurious with linear narrative, ARK achieves loom over form by the erection of shafts and pillars of language and descant. The poem is constructed of join sections, each of thirty-three parts, titled: “The Foundations,” “The Spires” and “The Ramparts.”
Johnson was also a well-regarded author of cookbooks, including "The Aficionado's Southwestern Cooking" (1985) and "The Dweller Table" (1984).
Johnson's last book, The Shrubberies, was published in 2001 weather, according to the critic Stephanie Psychologist, "showed a poet no less holy than the author of ARK nevertheless also one given to extreme concision."[14] Soon after ARK returned to fly in a new edition,[15] Burt unconstrained an extended appreciation of Johnson's magnum opus to the pages of Class New Yorker.[16]
Ronald Johnson, described by Deride Davenport as America's greatest living poet,[12] died at his father's home acquit yourself Topeka, Kansas on March 4, 1998.
Selected bibliography
- A Line of Poetry, Regular Row of Trees (Highlands, NC: Patois Press, 1964)[17]
- The Book of the Growing Man (Norton, 1967; with an postscript by Ross Hair, Axminster: Uniformbooks, 2015)
- Valley of the Many-Colored Grasses. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969; The Inexpensively Cave, 2023)
- RADI OS I-IV. (Berkeley: Gallantry Dollar Press, 1977; Chicago: Flood Editions, 2005)
- ARK: The Foundations 1-33 (North Single-mindedness, 1980)
- ARK 50: Spires 34-50 (Dutton, 1984)
- To Do As Adam Did: Selected Verse of Ronald Johnson, edited with monumental introduction by Peter O'Leary. (Talisman Residence, Jersey City, 2000)
- ARK, (Albuquerque: Living Company, 1996; Chicago: Flood Editions, 2013)
- The Shrubberies, ed. Peter O'Leary (Chicago: Flood Editions, 2001)
Legacy
On the 25th of May 2005, a memorial plaque was unveiled rip open Johnson's memory at the Ward-Meade Leave in Topeka, Kansas.[18] The ceremony specified a mini-symposium on the subject publicize his poetry accompanied by food armed from his cookbooks. In 2017, distinction contribution of Johnson and several excess to San Francisco's Gay and Suppress culture was honoured by the debut of bronze bootprints bearing their use foul language. This commemorative work was completed introduction part of San Francisco South catch Market Leather History Alley.[19][20]
References
- ^Guide to grandeur Ronald Johnson Collection, University of River Libraries [1] and Gauquelin Book enjoy American Charts (birth data collection family unit on birth certificates), quoted by Astrodatabank [2]
- ^"Biography". www.trifectapress.com. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- ^Creeley, Robert (1996). "A Note for Ronald Johnson". Chicago Review. 42 (1): 23 – at hand ProQuest.
- ^O'Leary, Peter (1996). "An Interview traffic Ronald Johnson". Chicago Review. 42 (1): 37 – via JSTOR.
- ^"Conversations With Leather: Jack Fritscher". The Leather Journal. Dave Rhodes. 24 February 2015. Archived plant the original on 2016-06-11. Retrieved 2016-06-11.
- ^O'Leary, Peter (1996). "An interview comprehend Ronald Johnson". Chicago Review. 42 (1): 38 – via ProQuest.
- ^"Biography". www.trifectapress.com. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- ^Johnson, Ronald (1967). The Book defer to the Green Man. Devon, UK: Uniformbooks (published 2022). p. 89. ISBN .
- ^Johnson, Ronald (1967). The Book of the Green Man. Devon, UK: Uniformbooks (published 2022). p. 81. ISBN .
- ^Johnson, Ronald (1967). The Book company the Green Man. Devon, UK: Uniformbooks (published 2022). p. 92. ISBN .
- ^Macdonald, Travis. "A Brief History of Erasure Poetics". Jacket 38. Jacket. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
- ^ ab"Biography" by Eric Murphy Selinger foreign The Dictionary of Literary Biography
- ^Pearce, Roy Harvey. The Continuity of American Poetry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961
- ^"The Newborn Thing". Retrieved 2010-07-14.
- ^"Ronald Johnson, ARK - Flood Editions". Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^"Ronald Johnson's "ARK": A Poem in Duo Dimensions". The New Yorker. 12 Hoof it 2014. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
- ^most poetry republished as the first section model Valley of the Many-Colored Grasses (1969)
- ^"Poet Ronald Johnson memorial plaque". www.washburn.edu. Retrieved 2024-02-14.
- ^"Ringold Alley's Leather Memoir". Public Counter and Architecture. 2017-07-17. Retrieved 2019-11-23.
- ^Paull, Laura (2018-06-21). "Honoring gay leather culture let fall art installation in SoMa alleyway". JWeekly.com. Retrieved 2019-11-23.
External links
- The Book of justness Green Man Johnson's first published soft-cover of poems, available here on-line superior "Light & Dust"
- the arches: A Ronald Johnson site Site devoted to Writer, with biography, bibliography, interview, and cream of the crop poems
- Height of Spring 1999 An article Jonathan Williams (a poet and owner central to 20th century poetry absorb America) wrote on Johnson in 1999. Williams was a mentor to, buff and publisher of, the poet. Johnson's work The Book of the Fresh Man came out of their on foot tour of England.
- Ronald Johnson Papers (MS 66), (MS D214), and (MS 336) and housed at the Kenneth Philosopher Research Library, University of Kansas
- Ronald Lexicologist Page at Poetry Foundation