With Deer by Aase Berg and Johannes Goransson

A review by Jordan Davis

I tend to prefer poetry when it holds its head up, taking in the world and responding, alert to beauty and change and able to talk about it in a more or less recognizably adult way. Since almost everything in the universe conspires against these qualities, and since it is impossible to live without poetry, I read a lot of poetry written with its head down, eyes closed, internal logic proudly untainted by common sense. Some of it is, within these limits, desperately good. With Deer, the first collection by the young Swedish poet, Aase Berg, as translated by the young Swedish-American poet, Johannes Gorannson, is one such book.

There lay the guinea pigs. There lay the guinea pigs and they waited with blood around their mouths like my sister. There lay the guinea pigs and they smelled bad in the cave. There lay my sister and she swelled and ached and throbbed. There lay the guinea pigs and they ached all over and their legs stuck straight up like beetles and they looked...

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