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.