Earthly Delights begins with an invocation to the muse and ends with the departure of Odysseus from Ithaca. In between, Troy Jollimore鈥檚 distinguished new collection ranges widely, with cinematic and adventurous poems that often concern artistic creation and its place in the world. A great many center on films, from Andrei Tarkovsky鈥檚 Nostalghia to Paul Thomas Anderson鈥檚 Boogie Nights. The title poem reflects on Hieronymus Bosch鈥檚 The Garden of Earthly Delights, while another is an elegy for Gord Downie, the lead singer and lyricist for the cult rock band The Tragically Hip. Other poems address various forms of political insanity, from the Kennedy assassination to today鈥檚 active shooter drills, and philosophical ideas, from Ralph Waldo Emerson鈥檚 musings on beauty to John D. Rockefeller鈥檚 thoughts on the relation between roses and capitalist ethics. The book鈥檚 longest poem, 鈥淎merican Beauty,鈥� returns repeatedly to the film of that name, but ultimately becomes a meditation on the Western history of making and looking, and鈥攍ike many of the book鈥檚 poems鈥攁n elegy for lost things.
Troy Jollimore is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Tom Thomson in Purgatory, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; Syllabus of Errors (快色直播), which was chosen by the New York Times as one of the ten best poetry books of the year; and At Lake Scugog (快色直播). His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Best American Poetry, McSweeney鈥檚, and many other publications. He is professor of philosophy at California State University, Chico. Website www.troyjollimore.com Twitter @TroyJollimore
"National Book Critics Circle Award鈥搘inner Jollimore presents a new poetry collection richly infused with classical mythology and analysis of classic movies, plays, works of art, and literature, and of relation to creations. . . . Jollimore offers unique perspectives on the self we play at being and the self we are or think we are in poems about singular characters in such films as No Country for Old Men, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Being John Malkovich. Jollimore's immersions raise the question, Are we simply vessels to be filled?"鈥�Booklist
"[A] ruminative, elegant fourth book by Jollimore. . . . As the book鈥檚 title [Earthly Delights] suggests, Jollimore鈥檚 delight and pleasure in description is evident in these gorgeously textured poems that are equally full of intellectual inquiry and feeling."鈥�Publishers Weekly
"Sophisticated yet accessible, this sonorous work addresses life in an unillusioned way and will appeal widely."鈥�Library Journal
"The poetry excels . . . where Jollimore incorporates his concern of the contemporary observer with the unique situations of today: corporate public relations, movie theaters, and a devastated environment."鈥擪eene Carter, Colorado Review
鈥淭his engaging and unusual book mixes humor, philosophy, and political ire, drawing repeatedly on film references to examine palimpsestic constructions of the self鈥攖he 鈥榮lipping in and out of roles,鈥� the possibility of two people seeing through a single pair of eyes, the next life that is likewise an earlier life. Jollimore鈥檚 riveting language is both familiar and uncanny, somehow as lean and precise as it is lexically rich.鈥濃�擣orrest Gander, Pulitzer Prize鈥搘inning author of Twice Alive
鈥淓arthly Delights is full of parentheticals, ellipses, allusions, and contradictions. Jollimore鈥檚 poems delight in syntax that tries, through capacious twists and turns, to locate what is the real. They raise philosophical questions about nostalgia and representation, melancholy and pleasure that Jollimore never attempts to resolve, preferring instead to place the reader where 鈥榚verything is / in flux and ungraspable.鈥� A vibrant, restless, and deeply intelligent collection.鈥濃�擯aisley Rekdal, author of Nightingale
