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Johannes Göransson
A New Quarantine Will Take My Place
reviewed by Sean Kilpatrick
Apostrophe Books ($14) ISBN: 978—0-9793627—1-2
This review is about 2 printed pages long. It is copyright © Sean Kilpatrick and Jacket magazine 2008.
1
Johannes Göransson is the artery from which a gratefully beaten last avant garde circle of writers continue their pump — a sick and brilliant huddle who have been endlessly attacked by over a century’s worth of justified analytical acumen from an amassed castrati. Göransson’s first full length collection of poetry a new quarantine will take my place explodes with so much amazing wrong I am convinced it is one of the best books ever written. This book will ruin further reading experiences, because it weakens a lot of previous efforts to write imaginatively, poetically, and at all. Here is Rimbaud the terrorist, simultaneously new and willfully anachronistic. Each line bites and outperforms itself, oozes into new arithmetic. Göransson maintains a rhythm of Beckett death rattles mixed over his own pure animal nightmare, all while being post-everything and indebted to no one. An attempt to describe this sublime verse demeans the reviewer and is the only reason I am writing a review. Eat this:
paragraph 2
Come back to my strangle. I want everything we do
to involve gibberish anatomies. That’s how best to
transform our teenage milieu into something less
freezing in the basement. Your skin looks lovely and
milky tonight, Hypothermia. Your youth looks like
the fake state flower of this hyperbole. I could do such
offensive wonders to your mouth, but I won’t. Not
yet. There are enough parasites in this bed to make me
royalty. King of Milk. Street of Thighs. I could make
such a wonderful cake out of your face.
3
I am thankful for homeless languages, lucky to be alienated. I believe in artifice that can panic well, that reflects the undeniable chaos of interpersonal communication. Avant garde literature is the most obviously underappreciated art form because it strives to be. I am always shocked when anyone uses this sentiment as an excuse to dismiss what has been, consistently and universally between cultures over the past one-hundred years, a trademark of the best contemporary writing available. Yes, the avant garde, the front line for critical defecation, invites no friendly audience. Yes, I believe people who strongly dismiss it have not learned the pleasure of a good beating, see no beauty in self-mutilation, and are generally pious and lack sex organs, but let me appeal to them, reluctantly, like this: no one likes dogma, especially purveyors of the avant garde. Manifestos happened because we are born defensive, born expecting, correctly, that no one is there to help. Certainly continue the bored sigh, spend no money on our books. Does any artist expect recognition? What writer doesn’t look forward to dying broke? Why do we write? For appreciation? To edify? Share? Be loved? Absolutely not — for excessive response alone.
Sean Kilpatrick
Sean Kilpatrick’s writing is published in La Petite Zine, MiPoesias, Pindeldyboz, LUNGFULL!, alice blue, and 5_trope. He is currently studying for a masters degree in English at Oakland University. He conducts author interviews (including Allyssa Wolf): http://anorexicchlorinesextoymuseum.blogspot.com/