![]() ![]() RJ: I think that was part of, kind of it, anyway. But Guy Davenport said never title a book something you cant pronounce. RJ: Yeah, it was a concrete poem with the word "worlds" with an "l" in parentheses so it would make "words" or "worlds" depending on your focus. POL: I remember reading a note that when you were first conceiving the poem you were calling it WOR(L)DS. RJ: I might get a whole new book and that would be too many books! Ive already got three big books coming out! POL: You might get a whole new poem maybe. It somehow is almost stitched outif anybody could figure out from those notebooks, I dont know what there series isit knits out. I keep my ears open and my eyes open and when I see or hear something I write it down in my notebook. When there was a good nature program on, sometimes I got a Rampart or two. Its just filled with snippets: things from books, things on television. I wanted it to be without history, that it was constructed of things in my time. But I thought that ARK would be like the Watts Towers, like the Ideal Palace of the Facteur Cheval. William Carlos Williams had a topography, a history of all of the people around him, you know, kind of a Whitman, he was a new Whitman. Zukofsky put a lot of contemporary history and Marxist politics into his poem. Olson said that an epic is a poem with history. POL: And then ARK would be more along the lines of the big modernist poem. Basil did it from asince hes Northumbrian, he substituted all the really pretty words for the hard Anglo-Saxon words, "tack," "grip," snap," "crackle," Anglo-Saxon words that give it a grit. The Book of the Green Man and "Briggflatts" are really the same: both seasonal poems, both trying to take in the whole thing and see it. The Book of the Green Man is a long seasonal poema traditional seasonal poem but in new forms and to see it as an American would see it. I had to write about it later and say in point of fact, it turns out that The Book of the Green Man and "Briggflatts" were published in the same year. ![]() You know, strangely enough, in the introduction to The Book of the Green Man, Christopher Middleton said this is the first new seasonal poem since blah, blah, blah. Oh, well, ARK is longer than those, longer than something like "Briggflatts." "Briggflatts" should be compared to The Book of the Green Man. POL: Do you see ARK very much in that tradition? There are other poems which are major poems that dont take your whole life to understand. Theres Wallace Stevens "The Comedian as the Letter ∜" theres "Briggflatts" by Basil Bunting. "Say, fellahs, what is an epic?" But you know there are other things. Those are the big examples and ARK is going to come join them. RJ: Well, you know, there are some other poems in there which nobody takes advantage of. POL: Right, " A" is finished, so " A," ARK, and Clarel, and maybe HDs "War Trilogy." POL: ≫ut still with those two yours would be the only three finished long poems RJ: I tried to read it once and I just couldnt, I couldnt keep up with it POL: I guess with " A" and then maybe Melvilles Clarel I think Louis maybe had gotten it all there, if you can ever figure out whats there. Well, weve got Olson and Zukofsky Pound and whatever and William Carlos Williamsand of course then he decided that he had to do another piece and it set if off kilterand Pound bogged down before he got there because he misread Chinese. ![]() So that when I got to doing "The Spires," I could just do Spires and think "what is a Spire?" And then when I got to "The Ramparts," which was really influenced by The Watts Towersthe outside of the Watts Towers which are mosaic arches: each one of those three lines is meant to be an arch, so that each one of those does a number of arches so that its really like a building as the arches go around: So I was just lucky. But I was lucky to envision a form that left me three different periods. I didnt have "The Ramparts" quite namedIve forgotten what I called them. RONALD JOHNSON: I worked on it all the time. PETER OLEARY: Let me start by asking how did ARK change over the course of the twenty to twenty-five years or so of its composition? Since it was published in increments, you always included incidental notes describing the next step or two. Note: This interview was conducted on Novemin the evening at 3901 Drury Lane in Topeka, Kansas where Ronald Johnson lives with his father. © 2000, Literary Estate of Ronald Johnson RONALD JOHNSON INTERVIEW, November 19, 1995 ![]()
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