BOOK REVIEW: ‘Blackest Ever Hole’ by Brian O’Blivion

Blackest Ever Hole book
Blackest Ever Hole cover
Source: Amazon

Blackest Ever Hole is a collection of poetry published through gnOme Books. Everything they publish is done anonymously. In this case, the author uses the named of a character from David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. It’s easy to see why. Television is a recurring theme in the poems. The introduction is a ticker of news items.

“Murder-castration tied to sex cult

Man writes identical sentence every day for entire year, commits suicide

Bear-safety lecture interrupted by bear”

The poems in this book all revolve around darkness, emptiness, death, and decay. Despite that, there is a dark sense of humor in several of them. The first poem, “An Act of Kindness,” creates a surreal narrative about heads that roll around on the ground that people pick up and put on headless bodies.

“We got rolling heads. We got heads that roll right up to where you’re standing, look up at you with their weird and wide eyes, mouthing sorry sentences.”

Many of poems create violent and surreal images, such as the poem “Pinhead.”

“My face is an abscess
Cut the cancer off my face
Put metal in me”

The language is simple but creates amazing images of rot and mutilation. The same is true in many of the poems. Straightforward and simple writing that stimulate the senses. You can see the destruction of bodies, smell the blood in the air.

Blackest Ever Hole is an appropriate title for this book. Reading it gives one the sense they’re in a dark void. It’s like wandering through an alternative universe that’s similar to ours. One that is similar to ours, but different in the most disturbing ways possible. Everything feels off like a waking nightmare.




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