The genre of ekphrasis, famously exemplified by John Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” considers how in looking at art, its history, materials, and makers, we may further understand our own humanity: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Jacob McArthur Mooney is acutely aware of the genres’ transfigurative possibilities in his fourth collection, Frank’s Wing. But rather than draw beauty from existing works of art, his poems, written as a sequence of “ghost ekphrastics,” flips the genre on its head and accentuate moments of disquiet that occur between the modern observer and the thing observed, considering where understandings of beauty and the self are warped in 21st-century visuality. 

What is the role of art, Mooney asks, in our current moment? What might our visual culture reveal about humanity? And how do we respond as consumers, overhearers, owners, and creators? Prompted by social isolation, global capitalism, and expanding definitions of art and its intersections within modern society, Mooney writes of art and our current moment as a muse and curse to try and rationalize an authentic form of living. The collection is split into two sections: “Alta Vistae” and “Reconstruction Efforts.” In the former, Mooney brutally interrogates the public space as the site of surveillance and capitalist trends in a deeply personal reconstruction of Toronto’s landscape that explores the author’s experience of class and ambition. The latter, “Reconstruction Efforts,” animates lost and destroyed artifacts to explore how only the human touch could simultaneously act as creator and destroyer.

It isn’t easy to discern which poems belong to which section. Mooney’s slipstream syntax and surrealist humour shift our sensorial borders, mixing everyday routine with modernist portraits. In doing so, he asks that we embrace disorientation and focus on beauty as it arises, whether in the life of a painting or our own. It is interesting to consider how the everyday materials of our lives—cell phones, books, streetlights—connect us to a larger pantheon of cultural images and history. Our material possessions define us, but in a vast visual culture, considerations of the self are warped by the public gaze, technology, and the market. Where beauty exists, untainted by technology, Mooney observes, it offers a window into the past, an exotic and unreachable landscape unavailable to the viewer. In this stream of images, Mooney’s humanistic insights refocus the reader so that we may instinctively remember the difference between when we appreciate something beautiful and when we are sold something beautiful.

One of the great achievements of Frank’s Wing comes from Mooney’s ability to recognize our existence as the shared role of capitalism while simultaneously arguing for beauty’s relevance as the thing that keeps us going despite all. While Mooney shows a deep reverence for Toronto’s development, for example, painted in deep greys and continual smog, he also criticizes the public space, corporations and government agencies’ role in turning our lives into a product for consumption. Here, global progress becomes muddied when beauty and simply living under capitalism are exclusive luxuries. How do we rationalize this personal and private sense of disconnection while relying on public surveillance for content, access, and convenience? The joy in these poems comes from meeting with the author, who himself recognizes his role as an observer and the thing observed yet delivers sharp, biting critiques with aphoristic phrasing. Towards the end of the collection, Mooney writes, “We are not afraid of applications to address civic worry. We’re afraid of open spaces overlooked by open roofs.” Not only are we allowed to criticize capitalism as participants, but such perspectives are necessary to realize social change. Mooney validates such feelings and breathes life into the desire to transcend our economic reality.

With the “ghost ekphrastics,” Mooney allows the reader to lose sight of themselves and become fully immersed in art history with rich, textural, and atmospheric poems. Here, Mooney reconstructs lost and destroyed art pieces, drawing from personal, sociocultural and historical perspectives in a striking blend of image and narrative. But rather than try to evoke or recreate an artwork’s full physicality, Mooney incorporates his observations with sharp diction and detail. Often guided by a concern for material culture, these poems feel like Mooney’s scattered thoughts walking amidst billboards downtown, his uncanny observations and thoughts enhancing the picture. This takes an impressive balance of narrative, image, and voice, especially given that the reader has not seen the piece or painting. But Mooney is able more than anyone to convince readers that art engages the self and connects us to a broader truth. Mooney submits to the weight and grander of art, which speaks to mortality yet represents infinite and mysterious possibilities. Yet for someone like Mooney, an avid and opinionated art consumer, the fundamental truth remains the same for many of us: “My relationship with most art living or lost is the same as yours: I will pass it by.” While even the author has not seen the destroyed pieces, he implies how they would have been received in the trajectory of the public’s gaze: “The gift shop: Vincent’s head and ear are sold separately.”

Frank’s Wing explores the art landscape, past and present, not in search of beauty but what has become of beauty. Mooney gracefully articulates the overwhelming experience of being a modern observer and how social, cultural, and economic practices of display and spectatorship shape and distort our perception. What art represents to the average person, of course, is subjective. But Mooney’s expertly curated gallery of haunted items convincingly makes a case for humanity’s disconnection from natural beauty toward profit and greed. Across the expansive yet intimate collection are descriptions of artworks you cannot see but feelings you most definitely have felt. His poems, which are routinely honest, clever, and quietly touching, explore this sense of dissonance and seek remedy in the familiar landscapes of language, art, and history. Beauty is out there. We just have to wade through the noise.