Happy EarthDay to You, Ronald Johnson

20^th century American poet Ronald Johnson composed this concrete poem during a year spent walking the English countryside.  It was published in his 1970 collection Songs of the Earth and appears again in the “Foundations” section of his epic poem ARK.

earthearthearth
 earthearthearth 
earthearthearth
earthearthearth
earthearthearth
earthearthearth

Concrete poems confront readers with initial discomfort, then calm them into contemplating the sense submerged in merged words. At first glance, they eye parses the poem to read “earth-earth-earth” repeated six times. Then slowly, familiarity breeds content: look closely and loosely cloaked words emerge from within [the] earth: ear, art, hear, heart, hearth, a, and the.

Words within words produce meanings within meanings. By inducing the reader to discern the work’s words, Johnson invites the reader to play with them, to use them to construct their own associations and meanings: art is the heart of earth, earth is hearth (home, food, warmth) and heart, art is the ear to hear the earth’s heart, etc. The poem and the “earth” belong to and are co-created by all of us. Johnson’s poem is an earth-work made of letters used as sediment and packed into lines resembling geologic strata. 

As a tribute to Johnson’s poem, Pierre Jardin decided to rewrite it in stone. The limited space of The Petriverse dictated that he distill the poem to the minimal elements which would replicate its results: he asked himself, what is the most compressed form in which letters could evoke all the words Johnson elicits from EARTHEARTHEARTH?

Jardin deployed brown jasper pebbles collected at Moonstone Beach and black igneous shards from the Yuha Desert to provide contrasting colors and textures. These different typefaces create enough contrast to enable simple static words to become complex dynamic elements in a visual poem that, like its inspiring original, invites readers to discern words within words, and combine them to create multiple meanings.