Poetry. Welcome to Johannes's "private genocide," ground zero for figurative language. Put on your best pig smile and meet the gratuitous martyrs, Kublai Khan, Colin Powell, the jackle-hearted masses, Herman Melville, Egyptian dogs, and the Coca-Cola Cowboys. They're all in the burning barn at the Big Dance where the Ballad of the Pig Circus plays like a torso full of "October of birds." Beauty becomes "a riddle doused in gasoline" in this Postmodern epic that mixes surrealist impulses with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E-esqe prosody. Notions of genre are demolished and language itself seems relegated to a wildly impossible epistemological space that is something akin to "whispering in hammers" or "speaking in silhouettes." If this sounds confusing, don't worry, the poet has sewn it all together with a "travesty of stitches," and he has "left his body inside the allegory." The poet satirizes, prods, pastiches, and "grotesquerizes" until every assumption we have, cultural or personal, crumbles in re-invented idiom.

Author City: South Bend, IN USA

Johannes Göransson was born and raised in Skåne, Sweden, but has lived in the US for many years. He co-edits Action Books with Joyelle McSweeney and co-edits the online journal Action, Yes with John Dermot Woods. Göransson has translated the work of Aase Berg, Henry Parland, Ann Jaderlund, Johan Jönson and other Swedish and Finland Swedish poets. He is the author of ENTRANCE TO A COLONIAL PAGEANT IN WHICH WE ALL BEGIN TO INTRICATE (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2011), DEAR RA (A STORY IN FLINCHES) (Starcherone Books, 2008), PILOT (JOHANN THE CAROUSEL HORSE) (Fairy Tale Review Press, 2008), and A NEW QUARANTINE WILL TAKE MY PLACE (Apostrophe Books, 2007). He teaches at the University of Notre Dame.

Reviews and Other Links
Andrei Codrescu @ Exquisite Corpse
Ross Brighton @ A Pelt, a Shrub, a Soil Sample
Sean Kilpatrick @ Jacket
Nathan Thompson @ Stride Magazine
author blog
Matt Soucy @ Coldfront
Johannes Göransson interviewed by SJ Fowler @ 3:AM Magazine