Ronald Johnson (poet)

Ronald Johnson
Born25 November 1935
Ashland, Kansas, United States
Died4 March 1998
Topeka, Kansas, United States
OccupationPoet
NationalityAmerican
Alma materColumbia University
Genre Modernism, Concrete Poetry, Erasure Poetry

Ronald Johnson (November 25, 1935 – March 4, 1998) 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. Johnson graduated from Columbia University in 1960, wandered in Appalachia and United Kingdom for a number of years, then settled in San Francisco for twenty-five years before returning to Kansas, where he died. Writer and critic Guy Davenport once referred to Johnson as America's greatest living poet, while poet Robert Creeley considered Johnson as "one of the defining peers of [his] own imagined company of poets."