In his debut collection, twentysomething Nova Scotian poet Jacob McArthur Mooney channels the raw and uneasy energy of adolescence. It’s tempting to read the book as autobiography. The poems have all the elements of a typical coming-of-age narrative: first love (“She … dangled transcendence/ from a fish hook,/ five inches in front of her face”), the first intimations of mortality, the private drama of leaving home and rejecting grown-up piety.

For the speaker of these poems, all of these formative experiences remain emotionally charged. In one of the collection’s strongest entries, “A Guide to the Physical Development of the Storm,” he addresses the spectre of his alcoholic father, focusing on one particular episode: “Dad, I understand now you were calling it a Jew’s Harp,/ that convex twanging echo from your teeth. It’s only been/ these last few years I’ve realized it’s not Juice Harp or/ Jew Sharp.”

Still, not every poem in the collection is particularly poetic. In “A Guide to Impermanency,” Mooney reflects on the instability of postmodern capital: “What if all his/ stowed-away money in glass banks across/ the world was found to be defective, machines/ would not accept it?” The lines are awkward and perfunctory, and while the poem as a whole could work as a performance, it is stale on the page. The poem’s underlying ideas are not all fresh, either: money and wealth are intangible – is that really such a mindbomb?

Some of the most muscular writing appears at the end of the book, in a series of short prose pieces that highlight Mooney’s comic sense and economy in creating character. After the speaker’s sister, Cait, “went two years pretending she didn’t need glasses,” she finally visits an ophthalmologist: “Cait came home from the doctor’s, took one look at my mother’s harsh rosacea, and went to a different doctor for a list of prescription muds.” Not that poetry is subservient to narrative art, but I’d wager that Mooney’s next collection won’t be written in verse.