The Sugar Book

by Johannes Göransson

Poetry. "It's as though his poetry takes us to the forest in Lars von Trier's Anti-Christ, where it's filmed, but then suddenly we find ourselves standing in front of a vanished movie theatre of our home. Göransson's poetry is a film that Death peeks at, the scene of shooting the film, the film shot on a roll of film, the movie theatre, the Arcadia. A single poem is the world's interior and exterior, it convulses wildly like an animal that has eaten the poem's interior and exterior all together with silver. bang bang."—Kim Hyesoon

"'I make a language out of the bleed-through.' Göransson sure as fuck does. These poems made me cry. So sad and anxious and genius and glarey bright."—Rebecca Loudon

Genres: Poetry

200 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2015

About the author

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 performance piece The Widow Party, which was performed at Links Hall in Chicago in 2008. He is also the translator of the works of several modern and contemporary Swedish and Finland Swedish poets and writers – including Aase Berg, Henry Parland and Johan Jönson.

He has written critically about contemporary American and Swedish poetry, translation theory, the historical avant-garde, Sylvia Plath, and Gurlesque poetry and other neo-gothic aesthetics. In addition, he has a special interest in film, particularly the 1960s underground cinema of Kenneth Anger and Jack Smith.
Together with Joyelle McSweeney, Johannes publishes Action Books; and together with McSweeney and John Woods, he edits the online zine Action, Yes.

”For me poetry is inextricably bound up in issues of immigration, homelessness, translation.”

Interview: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/mainte...

Reviews

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of words don't make the worlds, sadly.
I'm gonna try to believe I'm not sophisticated enough for it, ok? It's probably a good thing I'm not.

Some good stuff (the only 2 passages I liked!):
Q:
Have you ever fallen in love while a city burned? (c)
Q:
We are making histoxy.
We are using fucked up militaxy time
while the riots expire. Look how many bodies we can pile up.
It's the national debt. (c)


The rest is a joke. A bad, nonsensical one
Q:
There is a law against photographing a father.
My daughters are doing it again and the horse
has many holes in it.
...
The music is the same: Los Angeles, dirty bird, I'll be
your deer-heart on the asphalt.
I'll be your mirror. I'll be your allegory about
immigration. I'll be your body about death. Fox deaths
and latex deaths. (c)
Q:
My face is vile in Los Angeles, it's part of sexuality.
My body is precious in Los Angeles so CAKE IT UP.
...
During my show trial in Los Angeles, I was far more tender,
meat-wise. Drones have no stings. (c)

Seriously?
Q:
Drip-drip-drip-drip-drip
It's my son. (c)
Q:
The panties belonged to a beautiful homeless
person I fucked with my left hand,
the pigeons belonged to capitalism. (c)
Q:
One homeless woman wore the kind of skirt made for
finger-fucking in a cab. At first I thought my soul was
as pure as an advertising girl with glossy lips, but then I
thought something ugly was going on. If I was a girl, I
think I'd be the kind of girl I wouldn't want to fuck with
my fingers. I've broken some kind of mirror. With my
fingernails I'm clawing at the partition. I'm looking for a
window to look at. To admire. To break. Poetry is just a
man speaking to men. Skin is just a woman. (c) What. The. Hell?
Q:
Evexy time I make an image of myself an angel masturbates.
Evexy time I try to escape from Los Angeles a killer learns
how to crawl. Sick. (c) Eh?

The author summed it up, nicely:
Q:
Poetry is supposed to give us inner lives but thank god,
things get ugly in Los Angeles (c) This IS ugly.
Q:
The thing about me is that I talk like I have something
shoved in my mouth, which suggests that I belong there in
the harbor with the ship-wrecked. I don't have a future but I
have moths after sex. (c) I don't know how he talks but his writing sort of confirms this hypothethis.
Q:
Can someone just get rid of poetry? ...
Poetiy is so beautiful when it involves gasoline. (c) Yes, this book is a a prime example and a manual on just that achievement.

[julia l · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good 'bitopian' poetry. Some of the poems are better than others. Pg 72 is my favorite. I keep coming back to that page. I'm glad the book had style, purpose and some consistency. Especially in the beginning it felt fresh.

[AB NTTWO X · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite poetry books. Dr. James Pate had me read it in class. Has influences on my own writing.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Debauched gods under a tar-soaked sun. Almost every page shocked or impressed or disgusted or offended or all at once. No one writes like Göransson.

[Tom G · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yikes.

[Zach Werbalowsky]

3.75? I've been reading a lot of his lately, although each is different in their own sense, the themes become so similar, the writing so similar, its almost like the books just riff off eachother instead of being new things. Buts its pretty cool.