Don’t Be Interesting: Poems

Don’t Be Interestingis 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. Philosophically, its chief worry is that maybe the historical period, as defined relative to the present, has caught up to us, aided by our new and eager history-calling media, and so now we find ourselves in a kind of post-modern reporting chamber: simultaneously living the world and writing it down. What becomes of the future once the past and present have merged into one?