Ronald Johnson (November 25, 1935 – March 4, 1998)[1] was a poet from Ashland, Kansas, United States, whose significant works include a number of experimental long poems such as The Book of the Green Man, RADI OS, and his magnum opus ARK.
However, Johnson stated in an interview with Peter O'Leary that his true literary education took place off campus in the Cedar Tavern, a regular haunt of Black Mountain-associated artists.
[8] Johnson stated that the composition of The Book of the Green Man stemmed from his efforts "as a brash American, to make new the traditional British long seasonal poem."
The poem, which is interspersed with Johnson's lucid descriptions of the natural world, makes equal use of quotations from a variety of sources ranging form works of Romantic poets to nineteenth-century ecological journals.
[10] Johnson's use of fragmentation, collage, and his complication and dispersal of the lyric "I" justify his placement of The Book of the Green Man in the tradition of the modernist long poem.
[13] This mythology of an ambitious and protean epic project–– grand in creation and design and beginning (arguably) with Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass–– was continued into the 20th century by Gertrude Stein's Stanzas in Meditation, H.D.
Johnson viewed his poem as a ‘structure rather than a diatribe, artefact rather than argument.’ Unconcerned with linear narrative, ARK achieves its form by the erection of shafts and pillars of language and music.
The poem is constructed of three 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 American Table" (1984).