Johannes Goransson Archives • Page 3 of 4 • Tarpaulin Sky Press

Laura Carter reviews Johannes Göransson's Haute Surveillance at Fanzine

"Imagine that you are on a secret journey through the life of Jean Genet, through the shifting framework of a character made by Johannes Göransson," writes Carter, who imagines no small number of scenarios for readers of Haute Surveillance (TSky Press, 2013), in a review that's worth reading as a thing unto itself. "You are a teenage virgin," Carter continues, a few sentences later, "the marriage of pornography and Art, which will, in the long run (as many Woody Allen movies suggest) turn you into a Dictator."

Ken Chen on Johannes Göransson’s Haute Surveillance

Göransson's book-length poem, writes Chen, "combines all these meanings of pure, fake, authentic, corrupt, synthetic. The poem is an evil Leaves of Grass — not a welcoming cosmic paean to all American citizens, but a nihilistic porno where the pure and the fake copulate with a sordid glory. By real, Göransson means: children burning in bombed buildings, the bodies of foreigners, sperm and blood, traumatized soldiers strangling their wives. By fake, he means: film sets, stunt doubles, poetry. You can see this combo in how he depicts America: America is not an emancipatory pluralistic haven, but an atavistic theater of war, brutally real and, as Baudrillard has written, as simulated as a video game."

Jamie Grefe on Johannes Göransson's Haute Surveillance

Writes Grefe: "I was a mute foreigner, unpredictable as outsider. One who knows how to screw a fork. There are areas in Tokyo, in Seoul, in Beijing where foreigners are allowed to be foreign, allowed to tongue foreign, act foreign: needles, erotics, vomit. These are the areas where we grind chains in underground cabarets, McDonalds drunk with military officers, a man who said, 'as an American, it is my duty to protect you.'"

Bookslut reviews Johannes Göransson's entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate

At Bookslut, Lorian Long reviews Johannes Goransson's *entrance to a colonial pageant*: "Despite the tiny size of Colonial Pageant, it contains a gore so massive you will either shower or move the book to the other side of the bedroom upon opening its cover....Body parts, body styles. Genitalia as fashion, as construct, as exploit. Göransson takes Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity and blasts it with skin-made dynamite. He creates such a mess of appendages, desires, and impulses that the taglines of Queer Theory or Gender Studies seem antiquated compared to the blurring of binaries to be found in this work. It is a new thing. Göransson has managed to produce a discomfiting, filthy, hilarious, and ecstatic piece of literature that is cocked and ready."

Johannes Göransson’s entrance to a colonial pageant reviewed at Red Fez

Johannes Göransson’s *entrance to a colonial pageant* is reviewed by Robert Kloss at Red Fez: "One of those rare literary achievements, a work so new and brilliant and strange that a reviewer initially fumbles for any possible comparisons and antecedents to make sense of the text in-question.... With no true literary antecedent as preparation, the accumulating horror of Göransson’s prose onslaughts overwhelm with their ruthless beauty, to remarkable and lasting effect."

LitPub review of Johannes Goransson’s Entrance to a colonial pageant

Thanks to Tim Yelvington, whose insights abound. Here’s an excerpt: [...]

Johannes Göransson interviewed at 3:AM Magazine

At 3:AM Magazine, SJ Fowler conducts a brief but excellent interview with Johannes Göransson, with an emphasis on translation. "When you bring translations into the discussion," says Goransson, "people tend to get suspicious: How do we know that the poem is good in the original? That it’s a “faithful” translation? That we’re not being fooled? How can we master all this excess? You can’t of course. And that’s the beauty of it."

PANK Magazine reviews Johannes Gorannson's entrance to a colonial pageant…

At PANK Magazine, Joseph Michael Owens reviews Johannes Göransson's *entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2011): "[entrance] "demands its reader to engage it on a close sentence-to-sentence level and rewards the reader with some truly spectacular prose. Prose that, page after page, begins to infect the reader, begins to parasite the reader as host, parasite the host’s inner child ... before immolating the host, the reader."

"Johannes Göransson Dies for Our Sins": Nick Demske reviews entrance to a colonial pageant

Fence poet and Capo of the Racine Public Library system, Nick Demske, reviews Johannes Goransson's *entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2011): "For all its ugliness—all its child predators and body dysmorphia, its castrations, its Ronald Reagans, its hate crimes and artists and anorexia, everything—Entrance is the dubious gift of the diagnosis we’ve been too afraid to confront on our own."