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?