Responsibilities of the Obsessed by Goro Takano reviewed at QLRS

The Singaporean poet/critic Cyril Wong reviews Responsibilities of the Obsessed by Goro Takano on Quarterly Literary Review Singapore.

Fragmented Quest
A search for love through a surrealist landscape 

By Cyril Wong

Responsibilities of the Obsessed 
Goro Takano
BlazeVOX (2013) / 102 pages / USD16

If all reality is unimpeded, interconnected dreaming, then what use is left for words like 'real' or 'dream'? It is, I believe, a fair question — one that poet Goro Takano answers in leaps and bounds from the flowering of his own private and troubled dreaming. Responsibilites of the Obsessed is his latest offering, a collection of 'narrative' (I use the word very loosely) poems born out of the interstices of consciousness. Surrealism is still an underrated art, especially in poetry — a dangerous realm within poetic discourse which even poets do not dare to engage with for too long. If contemporary poetry has been criticised for being too obscure (i.e. demanding too much of the reader's intelligence and interpretive investment), surrealist poetry scares even more 'regular' readers of poetry away. If 'regular' or more accessible poetry frames us within mostly predictable parameters of linguistic conventions, combined with the safe comforts of semantic surprises through metaphor and analogy, surrealist poetry yanks the rug from under our feet, stealing even our feet and leaving us suspended with little left to stand on, or twisting wildly in mid-air.

Read the whole review here

Check out Goro's book here

Leah Umansky reviewed in the Brooklyn rail and a reading tour schedule

From Jeffrey Cypers Wright on the Brooklyn Rails' Rapid Transit: 

RAPID TRANSIT

[ read the whole review here, along with great reviews of new work by Rob Cook and Marjorie Welish.]

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Umansky on Tour

New reviews in GALATEA RESURRECTS #20 (A POETRY ENGAGEMENT)

The new issue of GALATEA RESURRECTS #20 (A POETRY ENGAGEMENT) is out and we have two of out titles in this issue. Do check out the whole issue as it's a real hoot.

http://galatearesurrection20.blogspot.com/

+ jim mccrary reviews BLAME FAULT MOUNTAIN by Spencer Selby

+ Eileen Tabios engages PRIOR by James Berger

Hurray!

Krystal Languell – Two Reviews and Four Readings!

 Here is some great news! Krystal Languell’s book, Call the Catastrophists, has two excellent reviews out. One at Starr Review  and the other at H_NGM_N .

Arsenic Lobster poetry journal reviews Carlo Matos' books

Arsenic Lobster poetry journal Reviews: 
Review by Jessica Dyer

Counting Sheep Till Doomsday
by Carlo Matos

Big Bad Asterisk*
by Carlo Matos

Let me be really honest with you. When someone writes a book of poems that includes a “flatulence” section, he’s won my eternal love. That someone is Carlo Matos and that book is Counting Sheep Till Doomsday. My eternal love is in the mail.

“There are so few serious songs about shit,” he writes. Oh? Tell me more. He continues, in “In the Spider House”:

To a spider, it is serious like
an old-world table: expectations to be met, a
host’s ancient duty, life and death. They do
not dare laugh at a fart’s deep echo

At the end of the book, Matos and composer Stephen Jean put the words of “In the Spider House” together with music and performance notes. They write, “All ‘notes’ above the middle line of the staff are to be performed as burps or belches; all ‘notes’ below the middle line are to be performed as farts.”

READ THE WHOLE REVIEW HERE