Transgressive Circulation

Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Poetry, Frost is often quoted as having said, is what is lost in translation, and American poets and critics have long taken this as their cue to subordinate translation to other forms of literary activity and to disqualify translated texts. In TRANSGRESSIVE CIRCULATION, poet, translator, and publisher Johannes Göransson reverses this dynamic, holding that we should use translation to re-assess our entire aesthetic establishment. Rather than argue against the denigration and abjection of translation--and most foreign texts--this book investigates those dark zones of expulsion as grounds for new possibilities, not just for translation but for literature as a whole.