JASON BALDINGER'S THE LOWER FORTY-EIGHT

Well, ladies and gentleman. Youve seen me here before. Peeking at the corner of yr reading. Thinking I'm better than everyone else. Concerned with the outcome. Bored or happy. The same old shit as usual bc we're stuck in the city. Jason isn't he travels, he has some world experience.

The Lower Forty-Eight is a series of poems. Jason Baldinger once made the whole van drive around the city a second time to tell a story in the car. It was about these kids who hosted Jason and co. who were clueless. They were my age and they bought him coffees from starbucks in their backpacks, and warmed them up in the oven, because they didn't have a coffee maker.

Jason writes about not having health care. He writes about coming into a record collection and living off the proceeds for a year. My professor said "I don't know what you're going to find out there in Pittsburgh, Peter, there's a few Labor Poets, but that's about it."

Basically, I show up to Jason's readings, and there's a few flavors: 1/2 bad, 1/4 middling, 1/4 good. The good one is a guy expressing legitimate tragedy. It's sort of the David Newman flavor. I assume Newman lead the charge. I assume there's some history.

What David Newman does write is the essential panic of Pittsburgh. Alcoholics combined with bad employers. You know, I'm pretty sheltered. But if you're about one rung down from where I am there's a certain panic, I know my peers feel it... It's all these yinzers who are still used to paying employees nada and then drinking with them later. There's a lot of bars here but they're all $3.50 a beer??

Pittsburgh has a series of speakeasies you have to apply to get into... My one friend said like "yeah, I got molested there". It's not a good or basically decent thing that these Pittsburghers are drawing on, the you know working-class shit... at least, nostalgia guarantees very little...

a review of "vast necrohol" by caolan madden

I played final fantasy XII and I too experienced the magic moment when you encounter the optional "necrohol" dungeon and are warned by your party members to turn back. Then there's a bunch of level 30 goblins that attack you.

I would call "vast necrohol" by caolan madden "a complete failure to use the video game lexicon in poetry". Probably because I've seen the "disintigrating art text" thing a bunch of times before, and sometimes better. but it's usually just an impediment.

I keep on thinking of those 30 something year old poets, in pgh, basically all the people almost close to the frame of reference that I love, you know, video game culture. I have no idea if caolan is 30. But I keep seeing that total failure to interact with the video game thing, in a way that I like, personally. I keep thinking those 30 year olds grew up with MTV values and that's why they act like this.

]\this book like lou welch says "maybe it's better if the poet was reading it out loud." Ok, I say, I can wring more out of it I read it out loud and there's a certain something in there sometimes but it's still a poor man's descent of allette which I wasn't crazy about anyway.

I have to explain why I'd call it a "complte failure to use the video game lexicon in poetry." Ok, it's not a complete failure. The churning of items in your stomach = the churning of items in your inventory. Domesticity of videogames == grinding loot. These are images which we give credit to the writer for.

But hey, I still don't like leet speak in the captain's name because it's just there to give the appearence of digital shit going on. which I guess is the point of leet speak anyway. It is maybe a valid argument against this chapbook to say "how much are caps and italics and leet speak and white space doing the drama". How much is imitation middle english there to just seem impressive. Well I'll give the imitation middle english stuff some credit as it does lend a lot of sound to what's going on. But it's also pretty tiresome.

ok mashing a = grinding in video games = erotic and frustrating, cracking femme oppression. But fuck the poems don't really do it, they're not banging, if you read it right and had personality when you read it you could get them off but maybe if you were at a tough bar everyone wouldn't give a shit?