I have uploaded to the Ronald Johnson page of this website RJ’s ARK 38, which consists of his recordings of birdsongs, meant to be a response to the collaged material in ARK 37, which consists of snips from Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to the Western Birds of North America.
Ladies and Gentlemen: the poet Ronald Johnson.
Thanks to a kind invitation by host Robin McLachlen, a recording of Ronald Johnson reading "ARK 34," his homage to Louis Zukofsky dedicated upon hearing of the death of the poet in 1978, and which begins the parts of ARK that make up the poem's second section, entitled "The Spires," aired on January 11, 2018 on CKCU FM 93.1 in Ottawa, Canada, along with a reading from me of my poem "Dante," which appears in Luminous Epinoia, published in 2010 by the Cultural Society, that resets/para-translates/dilates on Paradiso XXIV & XXV. Lots of other good stuff on the show. Have a listen!
Literary Landscape with Robin McLachlan.
The recording of "Dante" was executed by Gabby O'Leary, who goes by Knapsack. Have a listen to him, too!
Robert Duncan's page from Ronald Johnson's Holograph Book, from the 1960s.
Elspeth Healy, one of the special collections librarians at the Kenneth Spencer Research Collection in the Kansas University libraries, sent me a note recently to a link a little essay, "Bound for Heaven," by Angus Brown, who was researching Ronald Johnson's papers at the Spencer and was shown one of the two volumes of Johnson's Holograph Books in the collection, which includes the splendid page drawing above made by Robert Duncan.
When I first met Johnson in the summer of 1992, visiting him at his apartment on Elgin Place in San Francisco, he showed me both of these Holograph Books, which he had kept during the years he and Jonathan Williams were together, much of which was spent on the move, whether covering the length of the Appalachian Trail or wandering around England. Wherever they went, Johnson would collect signatures of the poets, artists, and other people they encountered. As I recall, one page contains Ezra Pound's signature; another, a drawing by Franz Kline. When my brother Michael and I visited Johnson in the summer of 1993, he showed us the Holograph Books at my request. Even still, they inform my sense of some of what a life in poetry involves: Meeting and talking to poets in these intersecting circuits wherever you go. The instinct to collect a page from each of them along the way continues to feel inspired.
When Johnson was dying in early 1998, he sold off much of his personal library to cover debts and obligations. This included the Holograph Books, which went to Peter Howard at Serendipity Books (no longer in operation), and then circulated for some years until Kansas and the Spencer acquired them in 2011.
Angus Brown's essay is a sweet reminder of how excellent a thing these Holograph Books are. Within his essay is a link to an enthusiastic treatment of Johnson's ARK, written by Stephen Ross, another Briton who has caught the RJ fever.
Andrew Joron on his Theremin.
Just noticed this perceptive note on Ronald Johnson's ARK.