Written by Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle, it must be read to be bereaved:
The Black Belt marks mastery in Asian martial arts. A ranking system, dan, consummates prestige:
Instruction, books written, fights won. Contributions to the art. Goransson is a teacher at Notre Dame, he both writes and publishes poetry books and magazines, he’s a translator and critic. Books written. Yeah? None of that means shit if you can’t hit. The Sugar Book packs a punch like an atom bomb. —Fights won.
Dime-tight into the curves, lightning on the straights. The movement of the Sublime includes a moment of dread in overcoming. Here there’s fear to spare. L. A. looks less like a forest of symbols than a matrix of surds. The killer speaks through the head of his victim. This ain’t Parnassian purity and reserve.
Neither is it paratactic: Dada? Nada. “I love sentences.” Goransson’s exorbitantly unforeseeable line is not Immanentist nor anti-semantic. And if it’s automatic writing, it’s machinic (firing on all eight cylinders). A circular vernacular. Freud’s death drive tied through repetition compulsion plus mnemonics to standard schoolmarm SVO. Haunt Musique. Sends its message like a mail train. Visceral Surrealism.
His end game is an exit wound.