The Shrubberies

by Ronald Johnson, Peter O'Leary

Poetry. Ronald Johnson (1935-1998), one of the most original American poets of the last century, wrote poems that were striking for both their minute observation as well as for their formal invention. Guy Davenport describes Johnson's work as being "poetry with a passion for exact, even scientific scrutiny." This volume, edited by Peter O'Leary, is a collection of Johnson's final poems, condensed and cosmic mediations on death and the natural world—"the halftones of reality/of veritable life/a various weave of stuff."

Genres: Poetry

131 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Norman · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Ronald Johnson died in 1998, he entrusted the manuscript of The Shrubberies to his literary executor, Peter O’Leary, directing him to “Prune the Shrubs!” As O’Leary explains in his Afterword, the original manuscript “consists of 229 pages and perhaps 300 poems.” Familiar with Johnson’s severity in revising his books, O’Leary systematically pared the manuscript down to a volume of 134 poems. A responsible, sensitive, and above all, loving caretaker of Johnson’s legacy, O’Leary now presents us with this last book, the joyous, bittersweet finale to the career of one of the great visionary poets of the second half of the twentieth century. More approachable than ARK, the “Walled Demesne” which remains the centerpiece of Johnson’s poetry, The Shrubberies, as the name implies, is a more domestic production, not a stately pleasure dome but a public garden, a space in which the good citizens of Johnson’s smalltown American utopia can idle, contemplating flowers and stars. Eminently human in scope and unceasingly lyric in tone, the short poems of The Shrubberies, like the grander and more elaborate structures of ARK, still present what may be Johnson’s most characteristic concern: the analogous unfoldings of the orders of being, from microscopic to macroscopic, which Whitman called kosmos. It is the Orphic task of the poet, through the visual and musical powers of language, to instruct us in the way of kosmos—but it is instruction that, as Wallace Stevens, a rather different heir of Whitman, put it, “must give pleasure.” Johnson’s last poems “invite the eye / invade an ear”—and it is through such invitations and invasions that we are made privy to what the poet calls “always my core dream / winding a garden / secret in every sense.”

[Stephen Kirbach]

This is a posthumous collection of poems written by a man with a terminal illness. It is thus edited by Peter O’Leary. The working manuscript would be intriguing to see, as O’Leary writes, “The manuscript itself consists of 229 pages and perhaps 300 poems. RJ wrote on the typewriter, so all of the poems in the manuscript are typed out, as are any corrections. When he was satisfied with a version of a poem he had been revising, he would draw a box around it in ballpoint pen. Frequently, a page of the manuscript begins with a line of poetry, which he retypes directly below the first line, altering a word or changing a line. He proceeds this way until he is satisfied with the line, then adding the next. Sometimes the whole page is filled with variations of the lines in the poem, concluding with a completed version.” This book gather 126 very short poems:

light put into words
like an iceberg
sunk unceasing sea

---
into something special. -sk

[Allyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to spend time with Jeremy so I pulled The Shrubberies from the shelf. RJ & JS are kindred spirits: Kansas boys, lovers of nature. I can see why JS held this book close.

Teaching note: these poems would be great to dig into when talking about sound with beginning poets. I just finished talking about sound with my class and I wish I had read this book sooner.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I edited this book, so my rating of the book is heavily biased. But you should read it anyways - the poetry is excellent, including some of Johnson's finest poems.

[Argall Pellegrino · Rating 5 out of 5]

One wishes that Mr. O'Leary had taken a heavier hand in editing The Shrubberies. This quietly Edenic treat lacks the economy that is typical of Johnson's best poetry.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This and Samual Menashe wonderful to read together because each uses the brilliant focus on syllables to such different but important purposes. I guess I'm ending up putting stars after all.