This is an eagerly awaited collection of new poems from the author of Tom Thomson in Purgatory, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was hailed by the New York Times as a 鈥渟nappy, entertaining book.鈥� A triumphant follow-up to that acclaimed debut, At Lake Scugog demonstrates why the San Francisco Chronicle has called Troy Jollimore 鈥渁 new and exciting voice in American poetry.鈥�
Jollimore is a professional philosopher, and in witty and profound ways his formally playful poems dramatize philosophical subjects鈥攅specially the individual’s relation to the larger world, and the permeable, constantly shifting border between 鈥渋nner鈥� and 鈥渙uter.鈥� For instance, the speaker of 鈥淭he Solipsist,鈥� suspecting that the entire world 鈥渓ives inside of your skull,鈥� wonders 鈥渨hy / God would make ear and eye / to face outward, not in.鈥� And Tom Thomson鈥攁 character who also appeared in Jollimore鈥檚 first book鈥攆inds himself journeying like an astronaut through the far reaches of the space that fills his head, an experience that prompts him to ask that a doorbell be installed 鈥渙n the inside,鈥� so that he can warn the world before 鈥渋ntruding on鈥檛.鈥�
Troy Jollimore's first book of poetry, Tom Thomson in Purgatory, won the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, McSweeney's, and The Believer, among other publications. He teaches philosophy at California State University, Chico.
"This sophomore effort mostly continues in the first book's nervous, witty, self-conscious, and at time self-despising modes. . . . Pantoun, epigram, terza rima, puns, and invented forms with new rhyming requirements make much of the volume a pleasure in terms of technique. . . . Altogether different and hard to forget are poems on which Jollimore concludes: stern, vulnerable, lyrical reactions to environmental peril."鈥�Publishers Weekly
"In this second outing by 2006's National Book Critics Circle Award winner (for Tom Thomson in Purgatory), the poet considers age-old but vexing philosophical dualities: appearance vs. reality, mind vs. body, belief vs. knowledge. Given his day job as a philosophy professor, these aren't surprising subjects; what surprises is the deftness with which he handles them, conjuring great American songbook lyricists ('Don't be misled:/ that sea-song you hear/ when the shell's at your ear?/ It's all in your head') more readily than Descartes or Heidegger. . . . Seriously playful ('no screw-up goes unscrew-/ tinized') or playfully serious ('no man's an iPod'), Jollimore adds buoyancy to weighty human dilemmas without trivializing or distancing them. An engaging collection."鈥�Library Journal
"Troy Jollimore, a philosophy prof at Chico State, won a National Book Critics Circle prize with his first poetry collection; his second, At Lake Scugog, is easily that good. In lush language draped over familiar forms, Jollimore explores the nature of the self, but don't let that frighten you off. He's got a great sense of humor and an equal fondness for a pun and a laugh, as in Tom Thomson in Tune": "no man's an iPod." Take that, John Donne!"鈥擪el Munger, Sacramento News & Review
"Fans of Tom Thompson in Purgatory as well as new readers will delight in a fresh batch of Tom Thompson sonnets, as well as a trove of new work whose ingenious play with form and notions of selfhood is not to be missed. . . . It can't be overstated鈥攈e isn't overrated."鈥擩ennifer Sperry Steinorth, ForeWord Reviews
"What makes the book exceptional is the way it embodies a style of language and thought only a philosopher could deploy so effortlessly."鈥擩ohn Koethe, Philosophers' Magazine
