John Bennett

John M. Bennett is a distinguished American avant-garde and experimental poet, visual artist, editor, and former professor at The Ohio State University. Born on October 12, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, he earned a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1969, with a dissertation titled Coatlicue: The Poetry of Rubén Bonifaz Nuño. He previously received senior honors in English Literature and graduated cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis in 1964. Bennett served as Assistant Professor in Romance Languages at Ohio State University starting in 1970, teaching courses such as Spanish 694N: Chicano Writings in Autumn 1973, which covered works by authors including Oscar Acosta, Antonio Villarreal, Tomás Rivera, Luis Valdez, and Octavio Paz. He advised honors theses on topics like alienation in Latin American novelists and comparative grammar studies. In 1976, he transitioned to the Ohio State University Libraries as a library acquisitions employee and became a prominent librarian in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, contributing to the Latin American Reading Room at William Oxley Thompson Library.

Bennett's scholarly and creative pursuits center on twentieth-century Latin American literature, Chicano writings, experimental text, visual, sound, and performance poetry, mail art, and poetry therapy. He founded Luna Bisonte Prods, a small press that produced chapbooks, broadsides, audiocassettes, and ephemera, and edited the international literary journal Lost and Found Times from 1975 to 2005. Among his key publications are Found Objects (1973), White Screen (1976), Meat Watch (1977), Time Release (1978), No Boy (1985), and over 500 books and chapbooks. He edited the Latin American Studies Newsletter from 1981 to 1995, compiled extensive bibliographies on Latin American history, literature, statistics, and culture, and curated exhibitions including An American Avant Garde: First Wave (2001) and Second Wave (2002) at OSU Libraries. Bennett led poetry therapy workshops, such as at the Midwest Writers’ Conference in 1985 and Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital, and organized the National Poetry Therapy Convention in 1983. He received Faculty/Staff Service Recognition for 25 years of service in 1994 and was recognized by Richard Kostelanetz as a seminal figure in experimental poetry. His global collaborations and performances have significantly impacted avant-garde and underground art communities.