He wrote it by blacking out words in a copy of John Milton's Paradise Lost.
Johnson's book-length poem RADI OS (Sand Dollar Press, 1977) is an early and influential example of erasure poetry. Literary career Īt the beginning of his career, Johnson was allied with the Black Mountain School's second generation, but then began to experiment with the poetics of the concrete poetry movement. He was active in the San Francisco gay community in Bear culture and was a co-founder of the Rainbow Motorcycle Club. Johnson moved from Kansas to San Francisco, spending 25 years of his life there. He then hiked the Appalachian Trail and Europe and there was inspired by what he saw to become a poet. Johnson was born in Ashland, Kansas on November 25, 1935, and attended University of Kansas and Columbia University, where he got his B.A. Born in Ashland, Kansas, he graduated from Columbia University, lived in New York in the late 1950s, wandered around Appalachia and Britain for a number of years, then settled in San Francisco for the next twenty-five years before returning to Kansas, where he died.īiography Early life and education Ronald Johnson (Novem – March 4, 1998) was an American poet.
For other people with the same name, see Ron Johnson (disambiguation).
