Poem by Jacob McArthur Mooney

Eyewear is very glad to welcome Jacob McArthur Mooney (pictured) to its storied pages.

Mooney is a 24-year-old Canadian with something of a meteorically-rising poetry career on his hands - something I'm quite glad of, having been publishing him these last few years, when my editorial eye came across some poems of his.

Mooney, having recently split his time into quadrants (Toronto, Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, Halifax), now lives in a small house with a pear tree in the backyard (as I am informed in his bio note; whether, like Augustine, he is tempted by the pears, he does not say). He was shortlisted for the 2007 CBC Literary Award in Poetry. His first book of poems is due out in March of 2008 from major Canadian press McClelland and Stewart, and is titled The New Layman's Almanac.

He is the poetry editor at ThievesJargon.com.

A Guide to Alternate Histories

Take a step to the left. Take another. There
was this photograph I shrugged off once
while moving, me and the hard local girl who
taught me the words to Basket Case, bent
from the roots into each other like the letter A.
Each time I saw her she’d ask me my birthday,
sometimes even wrote it down. I don’t know, maybe
she wanted to be the first person to ever record
everybody’s. Her best friend shot the picture,

Take a step to the left. Take another. There,
I got it. They both died in a car wreck, hit a ten seat
van in their rental, pieces of vacation thrown around
an acre of New Brunswick like late-night unloading
beside a tight-made bed in the next motel down the list.
Thanks for coming. I asked her what she wanted once
we graduated, she said first whatever, then college. I said
first college, then whatever and no I can’t go with you.
She said whatever. (S)he said my life’s a bore.

They found her in a cornfield, fingers clawed into
the soil, as if she spent her last seconds praying for
return. Her name was Martha but I often misspeak and
call her Martyr. Sometimes I give myself the creeps.
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. The farmer
went and sold his land, moved in with his brother in
Moncton. You’ll pass the place if you’re driving to
Quebec, get out at the first exit you don’t recognize, walk
into the parking lot. Take a step to the left. Take another,

there.

poem by Jacob Arthur Mooney

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Search This Blog