Ron Androla
Encyclopedia
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
scene.
Life
Androla was born in New Castle, PennsylvaniaNew Castle, Pennsylvania
New Castle is a city in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, United States, northwest of Pittsburgh and near the Pennsylvania-Ohio border just east of Youngstown, Ohio; in 1910, the total population was 36,280; in 1920, 44,938; and in 1940, 47,638. The population has fallen to 26,309 according to the...
to a family of mixed Syrian and Italian ancestry. In the early 1970s, Androla attended Point Park College and later Franconia College
Franconia College
Franconia College was a small experimental liberal arts college in Franconia, New Hampshire, United States. It opened in 1963 on the site of The Forest Hills Hotel on Agassiz Road, and closed in 1978, after years of declining enrollment and increasing financial difficulties.A small, eclectic...
, where he studied under Robert Grenier
Robert Grenier (poet)
Robert Grenier is a contemporary American poet associated with the Language School. He was founding co-editor of the influential magazine This...
and came under the influence of Language poets
Language poets
The Language poets are an avant garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s...
whom he emulated at the time. However, he regards himself as part of a tradition of underground American poetry that has largely rejected academic context. He considers his entry into the labor force as the true inception of his poetic vocation. For over thirty years, he worked in a factory as a pressure press
Hydraulic press
A hydraulic is a machine using a hydraulic cylinder to generate a compressive force. It uses the hydraulic equivalenta mechanical lever, and was also known as a Bramah press after the inventor, Joseph Bramah, of England. He invented and was issued a patent on this press in 1795...
operator. The faces and personas of coworkers often feature in his poetry, which sketches the minutiae of working-class existence in the United States in a spontaneous and sparse style.
He currently resides in Erie, Pennsylvania
Erie, Pennsylvania
Erie is a city located in northwestern Pennsylvania in the United States. Named for the lake and the Native American tribe that resided along its southern shore, Erie is the state's fourth-largest city , with a population of 102,000...
with his wife, Ann, who is also a writer.
Works
He cites the work of the Black Mountain poetsBlack Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...
as an early source of inspiration, and his work continues to show a strong influence of the Projective Verse style. His work also demonstrates the considerable influence of Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
, especially in its disaffection and in its use of the short line, paratactical
Parataxis
Parataxis is a literary technique, in writing or speaking, that favors short, simple sentences, with the use of coordinating rather than subordinating conjunctions...
structures, colloquial enjambments and stream of consciousness technique. Like Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
and other Beat poets
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
, Androla prefers spontaneity and directness of experience over revisions and polish. His poetry often explores an oneiric mental landscape which underlies everyday experience, with recurrent themes of paranoia, alienation and ecstasy; its tone is most often curious and subtly bemused.
External links
- PRESSURE PRESS: PRESSURIZED PRECOGNITION PRESS Ron Androla's new online network
- Ron Androla's Pressure Press, an online forum where Androla posts many of his poems—this board is now closed.
- The Secret Life of Ron Androla, an interview with Birdie Jaworski and links to several other audio recordings of Androla reading his poetry
- an old webpage
- Underground Aboveground: A Review of Ron Androla's poetry, by Jack Hughes
- Interview with Todd Moore of St. Vitus Press
- http://www.popcurrent.com/entries/ron_androla_-_volume_1-_poems_2005-2006 Androla audio selections from miporadio
- http://pressurepresscollection.smallpresspoets.com/ A PRESSURE PRESS COLLECTTION, 2007
- http://www.createspace.com/3354072 What To Say To Death, 2008