Dear Ra

by Johannes Göransson

Poetry. Fiction. In this indeterminate text comprised of letters, resembling both fiction and poetry but not wholly comfortable in either category, each sentence is like being stabbed by a beautiful murderer, each new entry like crossing a border into another language. "As intimate as it is expansive, this hybrid prose-poem-novel trips from razor-blade symphonies, to the history of stares, from landlord snitches to basement laments, leading readers down existential corridors that blaze with the dark humor of guilt, of loneliness, and of wishes for vengeance that speak eloquently of what we can find at the core of humanity"--Steve Tomasula. Goransson was born and raised in Skane, Sweden, but has lived in the US for many years. He is co-editor of Action Books and has translated the work of Aase Berg, Henry Parland, Ann Jaderlund and other Swedish and Finland Swedish poets.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

108 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2008

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

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating: 5 shell-shocked stars of five

More anon.

It's anon:
What did I just read.

Seriously. What the hell did I just read.

Matthew Revert Michael J Seidlinger Johannes Göransson

http://tinyurl.com/hmy5kxz

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You will never be pork again, never love all the beautiful people on the Bedford stop at 3 in the morning again.

We are not in the Welfare State anymore, Torso."

[Eugene · Rating 4 out of 5]

woah. that was pretty great.

a furious, unexpected poem. were you angry when bush won? how about when s/he said no? high school? when it was taken from you, and you were refused, and when you failed again and again? the poet takes and liquefies all that sick violence of actual and imagined experience and pours it into these missives to a sun-god.

maybe i don't know but it feels like it's a poem of a particular kind, a genre that you thought was always there but you just never saw in actuality before--except it never was and this is the first.

a kind of american hardcore.

an excerpt here and here.

[Leslie]

These epistolary poems are noisy, and within the noise there are lines like tiny stabs in my gut. I am pretty sure Johannes Goransson is psychically stabbing me with opalescent cocktail swords as we speak. Do I sound unstable yet? That is the cost of reading Dear Ra and that is such high praise.

[ipsit · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a great book. Johannes language swells throughout DEAR RA. He has what I can only call "moves" that make statements, then unmake them, or explode them, or drill into them:

"Before refrigerators were invented, people used to pour salt on their fish. Before rocking horses were invented, horses used to kick holes in walls. My hole is deep. Your hole is cold as a glove on the ground."

[david · Rating 5 out of 5]

YES

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time Lord

I have been thinking about which book I have read exhibits the characteristics of the current DOCTOR WHO television series: pitch-perfect disturbing, funny, wild, and theoretically jigsaw, all in the sweet envelope of a tesseract bigger on the inside than the outside that only a book of poetry can construct.

After much consideration, and with gratitude for my entire library, as well as for the “indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries” of my library to come, I am pleased to award the DOCTOR WHO TIME LORD MEDAL OF APPRECIATION to Dear Ra: A Story in Flinches by Johannes Göransson. Congratulations, Johannes! The Doctor will be arriving shortly. Just don’t look away from any weeping angels you might encounter, and you’ll be fine.

Note: Time Lord Incorporated does not abide by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) Code of Ethics in its distribution of awards and medals.

[honeybean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of poetry is incredibly interesting! The imagery is vivid, in your face, and graphic. I really enjoyed the variation between poems; especially the idea of "Interview with my ghost" - what a nifty idea! - and defining common words with how they make the author feel or how they are perceived in their world instead of how they are traditionally defined. A few lines I really like (out of context, but that's how most of these poems felt):

"My sleep has crumbs in it and sometimes it makes me dream about fascist insects, and sometimes it makes me dream about you. Just last night I woke up from a clumsy dream and wrote a poem for you. Unfortunately I wrote it in gibbered Swedish and it's hard to translate.

Contrary to rumor, I didn't kill poetry.

My soul comes from a card game with a dumb god that didn't understand the rules. I make up the creepiest rules."

This book, again, is graphic, so not suitable for all readers, but definitely a different perspective and interesting.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hypnotic and necessary.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Letters of messy imagination. A whirlwind of language, pained and alive. My first time reading Goransson and not my last. "The parades were all disinfected. I was deaf as chalk."