Ronald Johnson, who died in 1998, is little known outside the circle of assiduous students of avant-garde poetry, and for good reason. A West Coast recluse and peripatetic visionary, Johnson's major accomplishment was the epic poem ARK, most of which was either published in limited small-press runs or is out of print. ARK is thus a kind of holy grail of lost American weirdness; the edition I just finished reading is a softcover release from now-defunct North Point Press, dating from 1981. This intriguing backstory I took as an invitation to enter a poetic world of deep, strange, nearly incomprehensible verse that yet moves on a bizarre inner logic all its own. If you can imagine the Old Testament crossed with abstracts of theoretical physics and then narrated by William Blake at his loopiest, then you're approaching what reading ARK is like. It is probably needless to say that I'm hooked, and have ordered, at exorbitant expense, a used copy of the 1984 Dutton hardcover of the next 16 books (or "beams" in Johnson's quasibiblical nomenclature) of this strange, subterranean odyssey. What this all means, if anything, is anyone's guess. ( )