David O’Meara’s A Pretty Sight ranges widely across poetic form and historical reference. Though there are some extended sequences – the longest of which is the rhapsodic travel poem “Circa Now” – the collection mainly consists of free-verse lyrics: anecdotal, observational, reflective.

O’Meara demonstrates an interest in antiquity, especially the figure of Socrates, who delivers a dramatic monologue as he prepares to do battle against the Boeothians at Delium, and appears in a dialogue with Sid Vicious, with whom he claims an affinity as “the stubborn rube who stood against society’s rules, / then was put on trial for revering new gods.” Similarly, “Impagliato” humorously presents a dramatic monologue in the form of Albrecht Dürer’s “Rhinoceros” addressing the tiger shark from Damien Hirst’s “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.” 

This collision of classical and contemporary figures and idioms contributes to the book’s larger project of contemplating the differences and continuities between past and present, and the role of art/ifacts in historical transmission. We see this especially in “Loot,” which addresses the loss and destruction of historical artifacts during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003: “One man, a shoe repairman, / digs up an artefact, solid gold, // of a cow, so sells it / for a silver BMW.”

The ongoing dialogue between past and present usually privileges the former, so it is unsurprising that the poetic forms tend to be more traditional and “closed” than a lot of contemporary “open” forms. The writing shows little affinity, however, with the more experimental directions in anglo-Canadian poetics over the past 40 years. When we reach the ekphrastic sequence “Reclining Figures,” which compares the statuary of Michelangelo and Henry Moore, and the speaker intones, “Moore liked best / what wasn’t finished, no / ‘happy fixed finality,’” we might be forgiven for observing the contrast in the “happy fixed finality” of most of the poems in this collection.