The Yolo Pages

by Boost House

Genres: Poetry

205 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Gavin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Collection of internet poetry including tweets. That's an important thing to make (and in 2013 even trying was notable), but these alt-lit guys largely fuck it up by including too much self-conscious Actual poetry, which for some reason largely all shares the exact same register: confessional pretensions to social commentary, simultaneously jaded and naive, simultaneously moralistic and nihilistic, and which could have been written anytime between 1990 and 2013 if tumblr had existed then. It is a zeit which has already given up the ghost.

I love you is the most political shit anyone can say to anybody

It's greedy in the algorithmic sense: snatching in a straight line for the most obvious and trite and clumsy sources of meaning.
At least flarf was an ethos. ("rejected conventional standards of quality" indeed)

Ahem. I bought this to reward them for curating the extreme consistency and accidentally austere constrained writing practice of Andrew WK. Unfortunately that (and their selection from the late great horse_ebooks experiment) is as far as their taste and originality goes. (They realise that Lockwood is pretty good but don't show her off well so they don't understand why.) No one here rises to dril's level. There's a little bit of concrète meme shit here, but it's mostly too affected to honour the genre, just reheated Dada and Pop. Ed Ruscha did this 60 years ago you fucks.

The best of internet writing is among the rawest and most deviant writing, because no one could edit it, no one could desk reject it, and because no one could tell who wrote it to punish them preemptively in their own head just before they wrote it. "Based" was gaining currency just as they went to print.

Worth a damn: Catalina Gallagher, Melissa Broder,


Shitposts can be art, but not these. Needs more degens.

[Alexander Thorne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Yolo Pages is a necessary amalgam. It brings forth the poetry seeping in at the edges of literature and puts as much as possible in the brightest spotlight it can find. Here you’ll find writers that the poetry world has been desperately trying to sweep under the rug like some kind of malnourished, deformed, not-talked about, shame-bringing sibling that just won’t die. The truth?: the sibling is actually healthy, beautiful, proud, humble, and it really will die someday. Just like the ashamed sibling will. Just like you, just like me. But just not today.

[Charlotte Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uplifting occult awesomeness, a MUST READ from Boost House. I don't like poetry but I love this book. Just like, the perfect compilation for the 20teens. This book will be required reading for english students world wide in 200-300 years as they struggle to understand our tumultuous awakening.

[Logan]

Fun and empowering. The message within needs start trending.

[Noura · Rating 5 out of 5]

actually life changing.

[Robert McTague · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mostly inventive and thought-provoking. Some is childish and trite, but 75% of it is excellent.