Ark [Paperback]

Ronald Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 1996

This long, complex poem, modeled on the Watts Tower, a Los Angeles folk architecture masterpiece, is the first Living Batch Press drive, he said book—a series honoring Robert Creeley's "I Know a Man." The title alludes to Noah's ark; to the rainbow (arc-en-ciel in French); and by extension to Arkansas and hence to Kansas, where the poet was born.

"A work of singular beauty and resolution. It takes its legitimate place with the great works of the century of like kind, Ezra Pound's Cantos, Louis Zukofsky's A, Charles Olson's Maximus, and Robert Duncan's Passages. Its own specific character is, however, brilliantly singular."—Robert Creeley

"A late harvest of seeds sown by Blake, L. Frank Baum, the Bible, and Zukofsky, all in a new architecture, a wholly new voice, and even a new chemistry of words and images. It is for those who can see visions, and for those who know how to look well and be taught that they can see them."—Guy Davenport

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ronald Johnson's rewarding and difficult masterpiece ARK begins with a sparrow's pinwheeled view of the sun rising and the stars fading. Johnson uses the bird, "able to see the seed beneath its bill--and at the same instant the hawk descending," as a point of departure for 99 intertwined lyric constructions of eye, ear, and mind--a tangible hymn to beauty. The poem's concrete arrangement and nonce forms demand a reader's full attention; like Milton's heavily Latinate rhetoric in Paradise Lost, Johnson's style is as disorienting as it is rewarding. One becomes a carpenter erecting the Ark's foundations, spires, and ramparts.

This is a singular work of art, though it has roots in the esoteric American tradition that spawned Henry Thoreau, Charles Ives, and folk artist-architects such as James Hampton and Sam Rodia, whose Watts Towers adorn the book's cover. Johnson explains in an introduction that ARK is "literally an architecture ... fitted together with shards of language, in a kind of cement of music." Earlier books like Valley of the Many Colored Grasses and Book of the Green Man only hint at the grand scheme of ARK, which was originally published as three separate books beginning in 1980. His patience in its writing comes across in the way each line is a formal challenge charged with possibility. He himself recalls the universe of the book's epigraph, from Edward Dahlberg: "The universe is a slumbering animal that has visions." Johnson worked the last years of his life in a Topeka, Kansas, public garden and died at 61 from brain cancer in early 1998, but the continuous, active presence of his voice in ARK ensures that he will be remembered for decades to come. --Edward Skoog

From the Publisher

Published by Living Batch Press

Distributed by The University of New Mexico Press

Product Details

• Paperback: 283 pages
• Publisher: Living Batch Press (December 31, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945953070
• ISBN-13: 978-0945953074
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,547,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greatest long poems of the century., March 18, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Ark (Paperback)

Ronald Johnson, who died in March of 1998, worked over twenty years on his epic-length cosmological poem ARK. It was worth the wait--for those who love long poems like Pound's Cantos, Williams's Paterson, Olson's Maximus, or Zukofsky's "A", ARK will take a place among these great monuments. For those whose tastes run to more traditional works like Merrill's Changing Light at Sandover, ARK will delight and astonish through its ongoing exploration of science, spirituality, and the poetic quest. I've been reading this poem in bits and pieces for fifteen years now, and I am delighted finally to see it collected in a single volume.

5.0 out of 5 stars $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$, December 18, 2008

By 

R. Dale (chicago, il) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ark (Paperback)

I bought this book for my girlfriend several months ago. She read it when she was in school, and was very fascinated by it. It is difficult to come across, but I was lucky enough to find it here for very cheap. The prices that people are selling it for now are insulting.

5.0 out of 5 stars I wait years for this, October 10, 1999

By 

Thomas Hempel (Redwood City, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ark (Paperback)

I read the first parts years ago and always wondered where it would go, and it's so awesome to see it one piece. This is a true gem of modern literature.