Ronald Johnson

 

excerpt from Radi os *

O
tree



into the World, Man
the chosen

Rose out of Chaos:

song,

 Reflections
Ronald Johnson’s poem is an example of what is called “erasure poetry” or, more broadly, found poetry, which is a particular genre created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry, a sort of literary equivalent of collage. The changes—addition, deletion, alterations in spacing or line breaks, etc.—are intended to impart new meaning. In this particular case, Johnson has “erased” the first part of Milton’s Paradise Lost. (The title, you see, is what’s left after redaction: Paradise Lost.)

Erasure is a form of revision—of literal re-seeing. And what we are to learn from this process is that sometimes by removing layers, removing words, removing parts of the whole, we are more able to receive anew, better able to understand what is and what once was. In my own thinking about this, I sometimes have the image of clay, or a block of marble, as though I were a sculptor; it occurs to me that the sculptor might continue to shape, move, reconfigure what is there in front of her. And/or, she might carve away in order to see refreshed, renewed, and the real subject can then emerge. The sculpture may not be “born,” so to speak, except by removing what obscures it. So, removal and erasure become their own form. It is purposeful decision-making that celebrates and subverts and transforms, reminding me of what Meister Eckhart says: “God is found in the human soul not by addition, but by subtraction.”

Ronald Johnson1

1 excerpted from Radios by Ronald Johnson, Sand Dollar Press, 1977.

First published in 1977, Radi os, through drastic “revision” discovers a visionary poem within the 17th century Paradise Lost. As the author explains, “To etch is ‘to cut away,’ and each page... is a single picture.” With both God and Satan removed from the first four chapters, Radi os reduces Milton’s poem to elemental forces. In this retelling of the Fall, song precipitates from chaos, sight from fire: “out of Chaos: song.” It’s exquisite! Scholars say that whereas Milton sought to make visible the faded world, Johnson’s process was essentially the reverse: he revealed the world by muting Milton and, some say, discovered or rediscovered something new.

What this poem, and the world of erasure poetics, leads me to think about has to do with negative space, silence, and darkness. I believe it is true that the unsaid is often as important as the said, that silence is as important as speaking. I also believe it is true that silence is not nothing. And I believe that it is true that often what we cannot articulate, what we cannot explain, what we cannot or do not say, can instruct us in peculiar and valuable ways. In my case, what I have perceived as God’s silence, for example, has been as important to my understanding of myself in the world as God’s call has been. And, for me, sometimes God’s call is the silence itself. It is not