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A New Quarantine Will Take My Place
Poetry. Welcome to Johannes "private genocide," ground zero for figurative language. Put on your best pig smile and meet the gratuitous martyrs, Kublai Khan, Colin Powell, the jackle-hearted masses, Herman Melville, Egyptian dogs, and the Coca-Cola Cowboys. They're all in the burning barn at the Big Dance where the Ballad of the Pig Circus plays like a torso full of "Octob...more
book, 126 pages
Published
December 1st 2007
by Apostrophe Books
(first published 2007)
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What struck me about this volume of poetry was its completely un-poetry-like qualities: Göransson writes most often in prose blocks, creating poems that are many pages long with dramatic shifts between sections. One of his most unique structural tools is to break the poem in the middle by inserting a short exclamation on to a blank page, then returning to prose blocks. These exclamations often have a sarcastic or self-deprecating edge, such as in the middle of the poem "Pig Circus" where he inte...more
This book of poetry was not like anything else I have ever read. It was often prose turned violent, crude, disgusting. It was also comical and random, fascinating to read, and truly bizarre. The poems are linked in some fashion one to the other, interspersed with random short sections and long rambling sections. I can't truly say I enjoyed reading all of them, often I found some of the language excessive and got lost or bored halfway through a page. In other poems I found myself jotting down spe...more
I really liked this book, from the first poem on. At times I was lost, perhaps overwhelmed by Goransson's extensive use of metaphor and simile. But that was also the books charm. Certain lines jumped off the page - In The Seminal Union of Carvers, a poem about a personal struggle with peace and war Goransson writes "The enemies hide in bushes, the heroes go insane like helicopters." In the backdrop of Vietnam and personal imagery, that line hit me in the core and grabbed my attention for the nex...more
This book perplexed me. Although I did enjoy some of his poems, I found myself losing track of what the author was talking about in his poems of multiple pages. Many seem connected, such as the references of trucks in his Postcards series. I did not enjoy the sentences on pages between the long poems because it interupted my focus and I had to stop and rethink what the author was talking about. This book was very different from other books of poetry I have read because of the paragraph-like stru...more
A wicked poetry dump that resists prying out any tidy pieces:
"...The problem is that it's too hot
in this high school mausoleum; the dog salivates and
this interferes with its sense of smell. This makes it
tick too loudly. It leads me out on gravel roads and
minimalist color fields. Now we're entering a stadium
full of white people singing songs about heartbreak
like they were ready to round up all the strays in town.
Maybe they'll take care of my dog. They won't need
subtitles.
You have taken everythi...more
"...The problem is that it's too hot
in this high school mausoleum; the dog salivates and
this interferes with its sense of smell. This makes it
tick too loudly. It leads me out on gravel roads and
minimalist color fields. Now we're entering a stadium
full of white people singing songs about heartbreak
like they were ready to round up all the strays in town.
Maybe they'll take care of my dog. They won't need
subtitles.
You have taken everythi...more
These poems are definitely longer than most poems I have read. "Pig Circus" especially felt long, but I enjoyed its changes in tempo and tone. The poems were also interrupted occasionally by pages with little bits of texts. Though there are nice breaks in some of the longer poems, I found them to be too distracting at times. Although most of the time I had no idea what he was talking about, there are moments in the book where I can completely understand and relate to. I’m also curious about the...more
Johannes Goransson writes poetry like none I have ever read before. I love the way he experiments with different poetic styles, line breaks, and language within a single poem; I think the way he experiments with all types of poetry with little regard of basic poetic “rules” makes his poems so unique. His work carries a lot of pain, but I like the way he mixes it with humor and satire.
Though the book as a whole was less cohesive than I would have liked, there are some really powerful moments in...more
Though the book as a whole was less cohesive than I would have liked, there are some really powerful moments in...more
This was an interesting read through. Some of these poems were a little on the long side, but there is nothing wrong with that .The one titled "Pig Circus" felt really long to me, but I enjoyed it overall, especially the changes in tone and style it made. Each poem seemed somehow linked to the one before it (not always but sometimes). A fe of the poems were a little bizzare and threw me for quite a loop but overall I enjoyed this book
I really enjoyed reading his postcard poems. His prose poems had a lot of interesting sentences such as "My torso is not made for birds." I didn't really get into the book that much though a lot of the time I found myself getting tired of a poem half way through. It was an interesting read though
Dec 18, 2008
Kent
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
contemporary-poetry,
poetry-2000s
I don't know if there's a critical term for "overspeak." I'm thinking here of Liz Waldner or Lyn Hejinian saying much more than could conceivably be understood by the reader, but then through repetition of image, brings that reader around to comprehension. This is Goransson's style, though his overspeak comes mainly in these delightful observations. Well, delightful in their originality, but difficult because of the darkness in them. And through both this style and the nature of the images, he i...more
Goransson did not satisfy me at all; there was not much in this book to grab on to. His words were sometimes a little surprising but mostly weightless. His reference to his former teacher strengthened my feeling of him as an amateur. From the first page he was grandiose, vague, and melodramatic. From the "old ways" being so "glorious in all their savagery" to his sudden evocation of the truth at the end of this first poem, he seemed to be waving his arms. He mentions offhand that he lived in New...more
I once told a professor of mine that I wanted to carry a bazooka when I wrote my poems.
Johannes Göransson carries a bazooka.
Johannes Göransson carries a bazooka.
Vintage and perhaps "nicer" Goransson. Like a monster still nursing baby teeth, but you know what is coming.
I'm somewhere in the middle on this one. On one hand, this book made me anxious (a la The House of Leaves) but it also made me want to get back to my own writing (always a good thing). Maybe I'm still in shock after watching Dancer in the Dark. I never thought I'd say this, but: I need a dose of brightness right now, something like pretty ponies and gum trees everywhere. I've been taking in the dark art for too long a stretch.
"I keep mentioning my torso because I wish I were a
zoologist. I wish I were a surgeon. Or Darwin. Or a
ballet impresario in Paris. Or a mole in the ground.
Or a reptile collector. Or 5000 accidents. Made of
swans. Or Darwin. Or an injury. Or going home in
a wheelbarrow. Or moving into the Hotel Fuck. Or
bleeding slowly into a silver bucket. Or plundering.
Most of all I wish I were Darwin."
zoologist. I wish I were a surgeon. Or Darwin. Or a
ballet impresario in Paris. Or a mole in the ground.
Or a reptile collector. Or 5000 accidents. Made of
swans. Or Darwin. Or an injury. Or going home in
a wheelbarrow. Or moving into the Hotel Fuck. Or
bleeding slowly into a silver bucket. Or plundering.
Most of all I wish I were Darwin."
Amazing, amazing. I know it's not a contest, but his Shirley Temple poem is better than mine.
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Johannes Göransson is interested in approaches to writing that crosses boundaries – such as genre conventions and linguistic borders – and blurs the demarcations of the autonomous text. He is the author of three books of his own writings – A New Quarantine Will Take My Place, Dear Ra and Pilot (Johann the Carousel Horse) – with one more forthcoming in 2011, The Entrance Pageant. He wrote a perform...more
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Nov 24, 2009 10:58am