A Pretty Sight

by David O'Meara

Finalist for the 2014 Archibald Lampman Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry!
Like the rhapsodists, the storytellers of ancient Greece, A Pretty Sight shapes voices into a stitched song propelled toward the next century. Haunted by "time's frame / that dark shape near the edge of the canvas," David O'Meara sifts culture, art, war, rebellion, and technology, offering defiance amid decay, while singing with the conflicting impulses of reflection and dissent. David O'Meara has authored three poetry collections and a play. He's been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the ReLit Prize, the Trillium Book Award, a National Magazine Award, four Rideau Awards, and he won the Archibald Lampman Award twice. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 2013

Reviews

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Camus once argued the trouble for Sisyphus

wasn't the endless failure to prop
a rock atop some hill, but the thoughts
he had on the way back down
--"Occasional"

A Pretty Sight by David O'Meara is his fourth collection of poetry. He lives in Sandy Hill, Ottawa and tends bar at the Manx Pub. He is director Plan 99 Reading Series and VerseFest, Canada’s International Poetry Festival.

Reading O'Meara's limited biography left me wondering if this would be one of those experimental expressions I seem to stumble upon from time to time or something really good. What would a great collection of contemporary poetry have if I had my way. Science? History? Punk rock? Yes! A little Camus wouldn't hurt either. O'Meara delivers it all in style.

Years ago after reading the Divine Comedy, I decided that when I died I wanted to go to the outermost layer of Hell, Limbo. What better place to be than among the virtuous pagans like Aristotle, Penthesilea, Ovid, and Homer? Nietzsche was right, in heaven all the interesting people are missing. But what if Socrates met up with Sid Vicious? O'Meara plays the conversation out in an unforgettable dialog. Even borrowing one of Johnny Rotten's lines : “it's worth going where you're least wanted , since there is so much more to achieve.” The dialog flows with Socrates talking as Greek Philosopher and Sid talking like a punk rocker. They talk life and death and death by drugs. Sid is interested in knowing where to score hemlock. Never before has there been such a remarkable, smooth flow of conversation between so very different people.

A Pretty Sight combines many topics. Bombing in Kosovo is covered from the club of a Bass Faced woman. Bombs dropping in the streets and Springsteen's “Dancing in the Dark” rocking the club. “Sing Song” offers a eerie look at out world as drowned pups and kittens. “Fruit Fly” puts our planet in the universe to a fruit fly on out planet. Significance varies on scale and on a scale. “In the Event of a Moon Disaster” ponders what if Apollo 11 didn't go as planned. What would Nixon do? What would be said ? What would Armstrong and Aldrin do? How would the nation be addressed about the loss.

O'Meara combines history, science and philosophy in a creative and intelligent manner. A Pretty Sight is a worthy contemporary collection of poetry and a keeper on my shelf.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed the poem/short play "Vicious" in this collection.

[Mathew Sympsun · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely "get" poetry but this one hits

[Ramisa R · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with any poetry compilation, there are always poems I favour over others; A Pretty Sight is no different. Some of the poems required heavy external knowledge that I was not aware of, but I took the opportunity to check the mentioned people and places.

Among the poems that were universal, pondering and self-evaluating, I found them all incredible. They vocalised the honesty with words, metaphors and other literary techniques which were infinitely more influential than the typical writing. Even in the poems I couldn’t understand, due to the context, I found myself absorbed in the beautiful visualisation and scenery.

The writing style itself is also concise and effective; each poem, I believe, could not have been cut down to a smaller percentage. Sometimes, the vocabulary was a little too strong and unfamiliar, but still provided a brilliant effect to the verse.

Overall, A Pretty Sight was a magnificent poetry collection. There were a couple of instances I, admittedly, skimmed over due to the lack of knowledge of those described, but was immediately intrigued (once more) by the author’s wonderful writing style.

[Skyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

*I received a free e-copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Though poetry intrigues me, I normally do not read many works in verse. It's just one of those things that I can't seem to get into. But A Pretty Sight was such a remarkable melange of historical musings, cultural prose, and brutal honesty that I could not help but become absorbed in its pages. David O'Meara's words are bold and fiercely powerful. In Vicious, Socrates takes on Sid Vicious in a caustic bantering-style dialogue. In Background Noise one learns to listen, even whilst listening. And traipsing through End Times, your eyes are opened to a post-apocalyptic wasteland where "everyone became what he really was. 'Walking ashes.'" This collection of verse is dark, raw, gritty, and full of everything we try to skirt around in this contemporary world of ours. Hear the words of the rhapsode, David O'Meara, in his unforgettable fourth collection of poetry, A Pretty Sight.

[Lizzie Andrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Pretty Sight by David O’Meara

I really liked A Pretty Sight. I love poetry, I know it’s not the genre I usually review, but it is my guilty pleasure that I usually don’t share with many people. David O’ Meara’s collection stands out from the rest.

My favorites being So Far, So Stupid, Talk and Impagliato. Each poem possessed a bit of grittiness that focused on war, art, culture and rebellion. Talk really stood out to me. Maybe it is because of where I am in my life right now, but I honestly don’t know why it stood out so much. Raw emotion always appeals to me.

“Rooms where our unsuspecting ghosts still drink and smoke, contra Yeats, imperfect on every count.”

I am going to be on a mission to find the other collections published by David O’Meara. I can only hope that each other one will be as unique as A Pretty sight.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Pretty Sight, historical, scientific and war. David writes a top reading poetry collection. I haven't read a poetry collection so real since "Robert Pinsky's Gulf Music"

The poems that stand out for me below, but the whole collection is worthy for reading pleasure.

★Backround Noise
★Socrates at Delium
★Umbrage
★So Far, So Stupid
★No One
★Loot
★Silkworms

[Loretta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is poetry that is real, that is my own world, but makes me itchy with wanting to know how he DID that, and despair that I am so very far from even coming close. It is a book I want to keep reading over and over again for at least a year, but now with a pencil in my hand and saying it out loud and copying it in my notebook. So very very good.

[Tyler Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favourite poems: Background Noise, Terms, How I Wrote.

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my kind of poetry at all.