Summer Reading: Johannes Göransson Part II

More summer reading from Johannes Göransson….Some of the books he’s reading or re-reading this summer:

  • Joseph Beys, Arena – where would I have got if I had been intelligent
  • Ann Jäderlund’s new book (and also I’m helping her with her Emily
    Dickinson translations)
  • Karl Larlsson’s Form/Force (which I am also translating)
  • Various other Swedish artists whose essays and catalogs I’m translating
  • Aaron Kunin, The Mandarin
  • Angela Rawlings, Wide Slumber for Leps
  • Calling All Agents, Tom McCarthy (I like this manifesto better than
    his novel, Remainder)
  • Cinematic Modernism, Susan McCabe
  • The Worst of All by Estela Lamat (trans. Michael Leong)
  • Victorian Studies (Spring 2008) (About “emotions”)
  • Susan McCabe, Descartes’ Nightmare
  • Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (trans. Tom Conley)
  • Kruchneykh, Suicide Circus (trans. Jack Hirschman etc)
  • Kathy Acker, Pussy of the Pirates
  • Mark Wallace, Felonies of Illusion
  • Huysman, Against Nature
  • Cocteau, Potomac (trans. Michael Sanchez)
  • Juan Suarez, Bike Boys, Drag Queens and Superstars
  • Sara Hallström, Rötter Smälter
  • Amelia Rosselli, The Dragonfly (trans Guisepe Leporace and Deborah Woodard)
  • Jane Miller, Palace of Pearls
  • A lot of published and unpublished French and English translation
    editions of Henri Michaux

Summer Reading Project: Amy Wright’s Selections

Continuing with our “Summer Reading Project,” here are two lists from Amy Wright, author of There Are No New Ways To Kill A Man:

MOST INFLUENTIAL
1. George Oppen–for his examination of disaster
2. Aime Cesaire–for his love of even the unlovable aspects of his hometown
3. Dylan Thomas–for sound
4. Samuel Beckett–for his compassion for humanity
5. Wallace Stevens–for saying everything so plainly I had something to grow toward
6. Laura (Riding) Jackson–for teaching me how to fail

WHAT I’M READING
1. Naked by David Sedaris
2. We by Eugene Zamiatin
3. The End of Karma by Dharma Singh Khalsa
4. Blessing of the Animals by Brenda Miller
5. Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins by Michael Martone
6. Neck Deep and Other Predicaments by Ander Monson

Apostrophe Books Summer Reading Project

The editors at Apostrophe Books have decided to hop on the trendy bandwagon of “summer reading lists” by starting a new project with our authors. While we’re gearing up for our next open reading period (to be announced on this site shortly), we thought it would be fun and interesting to ask our authors to provide us with two lists:

  1. The books/authors that have most significantly influenced their work.
  2. The books they’ve read and/or are planning to read this summer.

We hope this will supply all of our readers with some great summer reading and also provide some insight into the work of the authors we’ve published at Apostrophe. We’ll try to post new lists each week from a different author. So, be sure to check back periodically . . . .

Our first list is from Johannes Göransson, who writes, “Here is a list of my influences in no particular order (I’m leaving out things before the late 19th century and I’m trying to focus on just poetry).” He says he’ll send his summer reading list shortly. . . .

Johannes Göransson’s Primary Influences:

  • Jean Genet, Our Lady of Flowers and Funeral Rites
  • Rimbaud, Illuminations and Season in Hell (New Directions)
  • Baudelaire, Paris Spleen (New Directions)
  • Aase Berg, all of them (Hos Radjur, Mork Materia, Forsla Fett, Uppland, Loss)
  • Sylvia Plath, Ariel
  • Robert Motherwell (ed.), Dada Poets and Painters
  • Richard Huelsenbeck, Fantastic Prayers
  • Bruno K. Öijer, c/o Night
  • Lars Noren, Revolver
  • Öyvind Fahlström, Bord 1952-1955
  • Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems
  • Jack Kerouac, På Drift, De Underjordiska
  • William Burroughs, Naked Lunch
  • Wolfgang Borchert, “Do Stay, Giraffe”
  • Max Ernst, the comic books
  • Mina Loy, Love Song to Joannes
  • Vallejo, Trilce (all translations)
  • Antonin Artaud, everything (especially Theater and its Double and Eshleman’s Watchfiends and Rackscreams)
  • Paul Celan (all the translations, Swedish and English)
  • Ann Jäderlund, Snart går jag i sommaren ut
  • Henri Michaux, Darkness Moves (trans. David Ball)
  • Henry Parland, Hamlet Sade Det Vackrare
  • Gunnar Björling, Där jag vet att du
  • Edith Södergran, everything
  • Vasko Popa, Homage to the Lame Wolf (trans. Simic)
  • Russel Edson, The Tunnel
  • Alice Notley, Descent of Alette
  • Ted Berrigan, Sonnets adn Bean Spasms
  • Frank O’Hara, the big book
  • John Berryman, Dreamsongs
  • Andre Breton (and Soupault), Magnetic Fields, Manifestoes of Surrealism
  • August Strindberg, Spöksonatan and The Occult Diary
  • Stephen Crane, The Black Riders and Other Lines
  • TS Eliot, The Wasteland
  • Mayakovsky, Jag! (trans. Gunnar Harding)
  • Blaise Cendrars, Complete Poems
  • Bataille, Visions of Excess
  • Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus
  • Auden, The Orators
  • Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto of 1909
  • Lautreamont, Maldoror
  • Gorilla (numbers 1&2, 1966 and 67)

Reading @ the Bowery Poetry Club

Apostrophe poet, Johannes Goransson will be reading at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC with several other great writers . . . .

Featuring: Donald Breckenridge Joshua Cohen Joshua Harmon Johannes Goransson Janet Mitchell and Ted Pelton

Buffalo-based Starcherone Books is a small independent press committed to publishing innovative fiction. Join us to hear recent work by publisher and author Ted Pelton and a roster of award-winning Starcherone authors. Voices will be heard, books sold and beer spilled.

Date:
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Time:
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Location:
Bowery Poetry Club
Street:
308 Bowery (betw. Houston & Bleeker)
City/Town:
New York, NY

Poet House Showcase

Today begins the The 17th Annual Poets House Showcase in New York City, which will include two Apostrophe authors published in 2008: Paul Foster Johnson and Amy Wright. Details below or from the Poets House Website:

http://poetshouse.org/showcase.htm

April 4-11, 2009

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 4, 1:00–4:00pm
Exhibit Hours: Saturday, April 4-11, during regular library hours

The only event of its kind, the annual Poets House Showcase is a free exhibit featuring all of the new poetry books and poetry-related texts published in the United States in a single year—with more than 2,000 titles on view (including volumes by individual authors, anthologies, biographies, critical studies, CDs and DVDs) from over 500 commercial, university and independent presses. The Showcase provides writers, readers and publishers with a fascinating vantage point from which to assess publishing and design trends and linguistic, aesthetic and philosophical shifts. Established in 1992 by Executive Director Lee Briccetti, the Showcase reflects Poets House’s mission to make the range of modern poetry available to the public and to stimulate public dialogue on issues of poetry and culture.

Each year, Poets House adds the bibliographic records of all the books exhibited in the Showcase to its free, fully-searchable online database, the Directory of American Poetry Books. With over 20,000 titles, the Directory contains the most comprehensive information about U.S. poetry books and publishers from 1990 through 2008.

@ NYPL Jefferson Market Branch
425 Sixth Avenue (at West 10th Street)
For library hours, call (212) 243-4334
Admission free

Martine Bellen Reviews Refrains / Unworkings in Rain Taxi

Rain Taxi Spring 2009

Rain Taxi Spring 2009

Martine Bellen, author of six collections of poetry including The Vulnerability of Order (Copper Canyon Press) and Further Adventures of the Monkey God (Spuyten Duyvil) reviews Paul Foster Johnson’s Refrains/Unworkings in the latest issue of Rain Taxi. You can purchase the Spring 2009 issue by following the link below:

http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2009spring/print.shtml

Here’s a little sample:

“Paul Foster Johnson’s debut book of poetry, Refrains/Unworkings, reads like an accomplished symphonic cycle of musical threads that are sequenced to generate ghostly poetry framed within a narrative context.” Reading Refrains/Unworkings, we are reminded of how poetry and music must exist within space and time as they fight to rupture it.”

Be sure to visit the Rain Taxi site or your local bookstore and pick-up a copy!

Great New Review of Refrains / Unworkings

“. . . Just about all the contemporary poetry I like reminds me in some way of Ashbery, and Johnson is no exception, with lateral leaps aplenty, and the Ashberyean penchant for constructing sentences of perfectly ordinary syntactical relations and perfectly ordinary lexical items that nonetheless hover tantalizingly beyond the outstretched fingers of reference. . .”

For more, check out the blog, “Loads of Learned Lumber”:

http://loadsoflearnedlumber.blogspot.com/2009/03/paul-foster-johnson-refrainsunworkings.html

Reading on March 12th with JOHANNES GÖRANSSON & JOYELLE McSWEENEY

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Apostrophe poet Johannes Göransson will be reading with Joyelle McSweeney on Thursday, March 12th at 4:30 on the University of Wisconsin, (Madison) campus as part of the Felix Reading Series. Check out their site for more details:

http://felixreadingseries.blogspot.com/


Amy Wright’s chapbook, There Are No New Ways to Kill a Man, Now Available!!!

no-new-ways-cover1

We’re pleased to announce the release of Amy Wright’s chapbook, There Are No New Ways to Kill a Man. The chapbook will be available at the Book Fair at the AWP Conference in Chicago this weekend 2/11 to 2/15 and then available for order from our website shortly. Please check back for full details regarding all events for Apostrophe authors at AWP 2009. . . . .

Poetry in the Presence of Sculpture

Isamu Noguchi’s Undine (Nadja)

Isamu Noguchi’s Undine (Nadja)

Reading today with Apostrophe poet, Paul Foster Johnson at the Noguchi Museum in Queens. Here’s the info:

This Sunday, February 8th, the Museum will present “Poetry in the Presence of Sculpture” in the main gallery. Hosted in conjunction with the St. Marks Poetry Project, poets Paul Foster Johnson, Christopher Stackhouse, and Cathy Park Hong will read original work written both directly in response to Noguchi’s work and thematically in keeping with ideas of community and identity.

About the poets:

Cathy Park Hong’s first book, Translating Mo’um, was published in 2002 by Hanging Loose Press. Her second collection, Dance Dance Revolution, was chosen for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was published in 2007 by W.W. Norton. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

Christopher Stackhouse is the author of poetry collected in the chapbook Slip (Corollary Press, 2005), and co-author of Seismosis (1913 Press, 2006), a dialogic collaboration featuring Stackhouse’s drawings and text by writer/professor John Keene. He holds an MFA in Writing/Interdisciplinary Studies from Bard College; is a Cave Canem Writers Fellow; and is a 2005 Fellow in Poetry, New York Foundation for the Arts.

Paul Foster Johnson’s first collection of poetry, Refrains/Unworkings, was recently published by Apostrophe Books. His work has appeared in GAM, PomPom, Fence, The Portable Boog Reader 2, Antennae, Bird Dog, and Octopus. With E. Tracy Grinnell, Johnson is the author of the chapbook Quadriga, published by g-o-n-g press in 2006. Johnson is also at editor at Litmus Press.

Click Here for more info: http://www.noguchi.org/index.html