Don't Be Interesting: Poems

by Jacob McArthur Mooney

An acclaimed finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize -- and one of our most galvanizing poets -- takes on The Future in a sharply perceptive and provocative new collection of poetry. Don’t Be Interesting is a collection that grapples with The Future – as public morality-keeper and private reckoner. The book explores the lines dividing the present from both the future and the past. Its channels include all the breadth of mass experience, from film and sport to science fiction novels, war, history, technology, and biography. Part travelogue, the book dredges up mid-century optimisms in Europe and America. In tones that range from wryly empathetic to downright caustic, Don’t Be Interesting calls out to idols and villains, from athletes to folk heroes to musicians to war criminals, and asks us what becomes of the future once the past and present have merged into one?

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 29, 2016

About the author

JACOB McARTHUR MOONEY's debut book of poetry was the much acclaimed The New Layman's Almanac. His work has also received the Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award. A respected poetry commentator and critic, Mooney writes the popular Vox Populism blog, and was a panelist for the National Post's Canada Also Reads competition. A Nova Scotian now living in Toronto, he is a recent graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing programme at the University of Guelph-Humber.His second collection was published in 2011 and is called Folk.

Reviews

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tongue-in-cheek and contemporary, these poems were maybe not at the very top of my list, but highly enjoyable and definitely recommended.

Mooney is taking on The Present, both as a state of affairs and as an idea, thinking about popular culture, science, and modern and postmodern alienation and history as a means of structuring our understanding of the present. I think the critique is incisive and exciting, though it isn't always clear where it's going (since this is not a book of essays) and I don't think that he's advocating for a radical break with the past and instead (while possibly thinking critically about History) is attempting to prevent us from thinking The Present is separable from the past.

Technically speaking, Mooney's poems are allusive and fragmented; he often uses partial sentences and freestanding noun or verb phrases. He is unafraid of cleverness (in all senses of the word) like in "Romulus and Remus and Hannah Arendt" which begins "Sorry. I meant: Kathleen Hanna." My favorite poems were "Leo X as Leo III in the Room of the Fire in the Borgo", which plays with time freely and imagines new possibilities for power, "The Fever Dreamer", "At the Initial Settlement of Mars" (which is exactly what it sounds like), "Romulus and Remus and Hannah Arendt", "Is This the Kind of Art That Makes the World Any Better?" (which I think answers that it is uncertain), and "On Spectacle" which moves itself smoothly through its subject in a nearly essayistic mode while still leaning on the poetic form:

They are literally hanging from the rafters.
Unpurchased memorabilia is erupting into flames.

They are literally reciting the names of the workers
who perished while building this beautiful arena.

They have literally cornered an international camera
and are pulling down their former leader's public bust.

I think at times the collection refuses to allow its reader's to dive into the poems with their whole minds and bodies (I'm thinking of T.S. Eliot or Sylvia Plath, but I'm also thinking of what I've read by Myung Mi Kim and Lo Kwa Mei-En and Michael Palmer) even though they are engaging, interesting, musical, and intelligent poems. That held it back from being a five-star book for me, but I still really liked it.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry. Just doesn’t do it for me.

Best lines in the book: “Your father said he never noticed / the present growing worse, but / he did notice the past was getting better.” This, and the piece titled The American Century in Brief, saved the book from a one star rating. Maybe I’m feeling too linear these days?

[Steve Slaunwhite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful read. You certainly don't need to be a poetry fan to enjoy it. (But if you are a poetry fan -- you'll really enjoy it!)