Ron Androla

Ron Androla (born 7 August 1954) is an American poet and the author of more than forty books of poetry.

Life
Androla was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania to a family of mixed Syrian and Italian ancestry. In the early 1970s, Androla attended Point Park College and later Franconia College, where he studied under Robert Grenier and came under the influence of Language poets whom he emulated at the time. He has been published extensively in the American small press scene. 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 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 with his wife, Ann, who is also a writer.

Writing
Androla cites the work of the Black Mountain poets 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, especially in its disaffection and in its use of the short line, paratactical structures, colloquial enjambments and stream of consciousness technique. Like Jack Kerouac and other Beat poets, 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.

Publications

 * you know how it goes (2004).  fingerprintpress, 2004.
 * Poet Head: Selected Poems 2001-2005 (2005). Rank Stranger Press, 2005.
 * "What To Say To Death" (2008). GOSS183, 2008.
 * "Quantum Aquarium" (2012). MIPOesias, 2012.

Edited

 * "A Pressure Press Collection". Pressure Press Press, 2007.

=Audio / video
 * Bongo Moon. 1998, rerelease 2004. Audio CD produced & directed by Kurt Nimmo.