Exoskeleton

Laura Mullen's "The Veil"

2012-10-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

I wrote a post about Laura Mullen's video poem, "The Veil" on Montevidayo. Find it here.

Forsla Fett/Transfer Fat by Aase Berg

2012-02-20T07:22:00.001-08:00

You can now buy my translation of seminal contemporary Swedish poet Aase Berg's third book, Forsla fett ("Transfer Fat") at the Ugly Duckling Presse site: http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/catalog/browse/item/?pubID=211

And you can read "Forest of Flinches," Joyelle McSweeney's analysis of the book on Montevidayo: http://www.montevidayo.com/?p=2535

Star Fuckers: Warhol, Björling, Parland

2011-12-11T12:43:00.000-08:00

Over on Montevidayo, I've written a post about Andy Warhol and the Factory, and the strange "factory" of Gunnar Björling and Henry Parland, Finland Swedish modernist poets.

New Book by Kim Hyesoon

2011-11-14T07:15:00.001-08:00

Action Books is psyched to announce that we've got a new book from amazing Korean phenom Kim Hyesoon now for sale. Buy it for 12 bucks at www.actionbooks.org (or 20 bucks for the new one plus the previous one, Mommy Must Be A Fountain of Feathers) or for 16 bucks at SPD Books or Amazon.com.

Now available on www.actionbooks.org and SPD Books: All the Garbage of the World, Unite! by Kim Hyesoon (translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi). The celebrated Korean poet Kim Hyesoon writes from a radiant black zone where matter becomes dark matter, human becomes trinket, garbage becomes god, a zero-point for our present moment's grotesque and spectacular inversions. This volume includes a selection of recent work, the landmark poem "Manhole Humanity," and the essay "In the Oxymoronic World." With fiercely incisive translations and a preface by Don Mee Choi.

"As garbage, love and death accumulate in her poems, your world will be changed for real!"—Aase Berg

"The final poem “Manhole Humanity” deserves its place alongside Césarire’s “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land” or Ginsberg’s “Howl” or Inger Christensen’s It. Kim Hyesoon’s new book is armament and salve, shield and medicinal chant. It’s here to protect us." - Christian Hawkey

ALL THE GARBAGE OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
On the seat you left, two beer bottles, a cigarette butt, two pieces of scratch paper.
Why are you screening my calls, my messages? Don’t you have anything else to do?
You are the bourgeoisie of communication. Why am I always afraid of the phone?
When you look at me, I always feel as if I should change into something else.
How about changing myself into a bundle of clothes dumped on the sofa
or a pale pink wad of bubble gum dangling from someone’s lips
like the poor tummies of all the animals that flail about when they are turned over?
Do you know?
Eyesnavel god. Forearmsearflap god.
Sweetpotatokneesappleseed god. Pigstoenailschick god.
Dreamingdivingbeetlesashtree god. Lovelygirlsheelstoenail god.
Antsghostscatseyeball god. Ratholescatsrottingwater god.
Mrsdustingarmselephant god. Salivadropexplodeslikefreongas.
Salivafountainevenmoremortifyingnauseatingthanthesmelloflionsrottenbreath god.
Do you know all the dearest gods that are hanging onto our limbs?
On the seat you left, a wet towel, a wad of gum, a crushed tomato.
Dear blackgarbagebags who thankfully lent each one of their bodies.
Dear foldedarms of the window and concrete and steel under my feet.
How high the armsofthemachinehammers that beat down steadily upon
those foldedarms.
All the pigs of the world unite god. All the cats of the world let’s become a butter god.
Dear wrists escape from the arms god. Heap of curses, mackerel corpses spit out from a soccer player’s mouth god. There are 3 million gods in India. How many people live there?
Dearest multiple gods that have swarmed in from the sky, land, sea.
On the seat you left, I sit like a garbage god, and do you or don’t you know
that I wait for the green truck heading to the landfill like the dearest dirtiest loftiest god
who has long endured till now because of its hunger for humans?
Do you or don’t you know that every day our hair falls and mixes with the melting water of an iceberg in the faraway sea?
Yournostrilssingledropofapricklynosehairearth god!

Nathalie Djurberg

2011-11-13T06:20:00.001-08:00

I wrote a piece on the necropastoral and Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg's exhibit at the Walker, The Parade.

Tranströmer wins Nobel Prize

2011-10-06T10:11:00.000-07:00

I wrote a little post about Tranströmer in honor of his winning the Nobel Prize.

New Issue of Action, Yes

2011-08-30T12:59:00.001-07:00

New special Swedish issue of Action, Yes, guest edited by Anna Thörn and Sara Tuss Efrik, featuring art, texts, performances by Stina Kajaso, Cia Rinne, Ida Börjel, Leif Holmstrand and a whole slew of others: http://www.actionyes.org/index.htm

And here's a notice from Svenska Dagbladet.

Rats in the Fence: “Influence” and Bataille Boully, Feng Sun Chen, Aase Berg and HP Lovecraft

2011-08-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

I wrote a post about unhealthy influence, HP Lovecraft, Aase Berg, Bataille, the HBO show True Blood and a few other things.

Imperiet/Thåström/the 1980s

2011-08-24T06:39:00.000-07:00

I wrote yet another post about the "plague stage" and the Swedish 80s band Imperiet.

Corpse Language: Geechie Wiley, Ezra Pound, HP Lovecraft

2011-08-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

Hi
I posted a post about the "corpse language" of blues great Geechie Wiley, Ezra, and HP Lovecraft over on Montevidayo. It's a sequel of sorts to the PJ Harvey post from a few days ago. It also deals with "accessbility" and "obscurity" and "the Image".

Gothic Plague Stages: PJ Harvey, Herzog, Aase Berg

2011-08-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I wrote a post at Montevidayo about Herzog's Nosferatu remake:

PJ Harvey:

And Aase Berg's Mörk materia (Dark Matter):

"Mouth-arms long, folded. The visible stylus and the seed capsule. A nauseating number of butterflies hovered in the odor from our open, sugar-soft wounds. And lanterns rose and fell from the city’s tallest Ferris Wheel. We followed Saskia along an alley of thujas and cypresses, rhodedendrons, purpurea, orchids, opium. The night sky wailed and exploded in fireworks and bursting particle heaps.

And shadows of mongoloids, pinheads, fatdogs and androids moved toward the wood, rubbed against the fossils and the veinage in the cell walls. There the body was harrowed by beasts, thrown back and forth in a deadsilent battle fight between muscle mechanisms and distortions between large milk-white moray eels inside the vein-burst petal skin.

She bites froth into the air. She crawls dog across the cracked floors. She pukes a sound into the mirror glass. The jellyfish burns in her, the planet burns in her. The floors are completely covered with straw, scales, spores, white petal wings..."

Herzog's Sublime

2011-07-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

Joyelle has an interesting post up about Werner Herzog (The Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner, Cave of Forgotten Dreams) on Montevidayo.

Counterfeit lineages

2011-06-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

I wrote a post about the aesthetics of homelessness, the avant-garde and the pesky immigrants.

here's how the post begins:

"1.
As I always say: the most famous definition of poetry in US culture is Robert Frost’s quip that poetry is what is lost in translation. (It’s so famous it’s even the title of a blockbuster movie, “Lost in Translation” – which notably is about “poetic effect,” not poetry proper, see my post about McQueen.) And almost as famous is his quip that writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net. The two are of course related: at the core is the idea of poetry as something disciplined and authentic, and that it must be protected against the fake, the lazy, the chaotic, the cheaters, the foreign.

2.
Despite various changes, it seems translation still is kept at the margins of American poetry. Translation is inherently a challenge to the dominant idea of “lineage” (perhaps lineage is inherently “dominant”) in US poetry: poetry is authentic, to write real poetry you have to know the true version of US literary history. Poetry has to be defended against the fake, against kitsch (“hipster poetry” or “soft surrealism” or whatever). You have to have a “good ear” to write poetry – it must come to you naturally..."

"Excessive Beauty": McQueen, Minnis, Kitsch etc

2011-06-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

Wrote another post about kitsch, beauty, Chelsea Minnis, Alexander McQueen etc.

On Perloff, Decadence, Taste

2011-06-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

Wrote a new post today about Marjorie Perloff (Pound vs Eliot), anti-decadence rhetoric etc.

Sci-Fi Decadence: China Miéville, Aase Berg and Alexander McQueen

2011-06-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

Wrote a piece about the sci-fi decadence of China Miéville, Aase Berg and Alexander McQueen.

Interview on HTML Giant

2011-06-06T09:12:00.000-07:00

Blake Butler interviewed me in HTML Giant here.

Excerpt:

"BB: What are you working on now?

JG: A murder mystery novel/poem/notebook about Images and infection, atrocity kitsch and The Law. A Starlet has been murdered, terrorist attacks happen, children are born and get pregnant in mysterious fashion (constantly multiplying), the son is locked in a tower with his favorite horse toy, the penis is a death prong through which – on the ouiji board – the murdered children of the Vietnam War finally gets to “speak,” they talk about the mall and the law, there are twitter feeds about motorcyclists who come from the castle outside of town, terror suspects who are given rubber gloves and led through the mirror, “Kingdom of Rats” it says above the mirror, it’s all about photography, hares, the body in snow, the body covered by a plastic bag, Art as Death. Etc. It’s always a staging, a pageantry, a b-movie. I hope that gives you some idea. I’m calling it The Sugar Book.

I’m also working on a staging of The Duchess of Malfi. Back in the day a girlfriend and I made a video version of The Duchess of Malfi which we shot at a shooting range (she was into guns and knew the manager). “The Ouch-Ouch” we called it. I want to go back into that space – the shooting range, the wax sculptures – but I want to pay even more attention to the clothes, the seams. I want the movements to be more exact this time."

[I'm just now taking a break from this writing.]

Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol

2011-06-01T07:26:00.001-07:00

I wrote a post about Dylan and Warhol (and Edie Sedgwick) on Montevidayo.

Swedes don't exist

2011-05-10T15:16:00.000-07:00

I wrote a blog post about how Swedes don't exist and immigrant kitsch, being "naturalized," etc.

Poetry Magazine

2011-05-04T10:56:00.001-07:00

I wrote a post about the rhetoric of Poetry Magazine (on Montevidayo).

"Accessibility" and Billy Collins

2011-04-21T10:27:00.001-07:00

I wrote a post about "accessibility," "atrocity kitsch," "Violence" and "Billy Collins."

"Kitsch"

2011-04-13T10:54:00.000-07:00

I wrote a post about kitsch and museums and Ron Silliman and Carolyn Forché and softness and mushiness and postcolonialism and Aase Berg and some other stuff.

Jessica Lawson on Kim Hyesoon

2011-04-10T10:03:00.001-07:00

Jessica Lawson has written a great, insightful review of Kim Hyesoon's poetry over at the new Jacket online journal, "Contagious Poetry":

"The patient’s disease threatens to reach out beyond the body and invade others, moving with the force of a river that cannot be dammed even when the word river is carefully broken up. Meaning manages to leak out even in the face of verbal mutilation and constant interruption, so that the poem operates by a contagion that spreads among words and makes collective sense of them. Poetry is a virus, its semiotic contagion infusing bodies and connecting us to one another and to the language with which we are infected. Viewed in this way, poetry is both an intimately corporeal act and a guerilla-style revolution in the politics of expression."

Lawson's emphasis on the body as a two way street of violence and politics suggests a connection to what Joyelle and I called "soft surrealism" a while back (yes, we intentionally misread Ron Silliman's phrase to critique his politics; yes we were totally talking about poets like Kim Hyesoon, not actually the poets Ron was talking about), as well as Mark Seltzer's idea of "wound culture," where collectivity is gathered around wounds.

Not to mention Joyelle's recent entry where she compares the way Kim Hyesoon and Camille Rose Garcia's bodies deal with pollution and contamination.

Anyway, I think this was a really thoughtful essay, an important essay for putting the body - not as a simple "realness" but as something more complicated and interesting - in to the discussion of poetry.

Camille Rose Garcia and Wallpaper

2011-04-07T17:38:00.001-07:00

I've been writing a few blog posts about Camille Rose Garcia and wallpaper.

Kyle Minor reviews the Entrance Pageant

2011-03-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

Kyle Minor has written an excellent review of my new book, Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate, on The Faster Times.

Here's an excerpt:

"Göransson clearly does not subscribe to the now-fashionable notion that literature ought not traffic explicitly in symbolism. Characters wear masks, their names are often simply descriptions of the type they describe, their actions are often transparently stand-ins for abstract things outside the story. But, as promised by the verb intricate, these starting places are quickly undermined by way of special language, special syntax, special turns of character. Miss World, for example, is a five year-old boy in a basketball jersey. The characters of the Father and the Daughter seem to actually shift personas while remaining a constant if disrupted continuum of the two characters Father and Daughter. The second time we see the Daughter, she is “television horny.” The Natives are often given the task of asking people intrusive questions in the mall they are using as their staging area. Hollywood is played by a heap of dead horses. The character named Stagehand, who is literally a stagehand, is made to fall into obsessive love with an audience member before castrating himself, and this progression happens very quickly. He has castrated himself harmless to the audience member by page nine..."

I'm very pleased to know that someone really engaged with the book.