Earthly Delights: Poems

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From the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, a new collection of philosophical, elegiac, and wry meditations on film, painting, music, and poetry itself

Earthly Delights begins with an invocation to the muse and ends with the departure of Odysseus from Ithaca. In between, Troy Jollimores 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 Tarkovskys Nostalghia to Paul Thomas Andersons Boogie Nights. The title poem reflects on Hieronymus Boschs 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 todays active shooter drills, and philosophical ideas, from Ralph Waldo Emersons musings on beauty to John D. Rockefellers thoughts on the relation between roses and capitalist ethics. The books longest poem, American Beauty, returns repeatedly to the film of that name, but ultimately becomes a meditation on the Western history of making and looking, andlike many of the books poemsan elegy for lost things.

Reviews

"National Book Critics Circle Awardwinner 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" * Booklist *
"[A] ruminative, elegant fourth book by Jollimore. . . . As the books title [Earthly Delights] suggests, Jollimores delight and pleasure in description is evident in these gorgeously textured poems that are equally full of intellectual inquiry and feeling." * Publishers Weekly *
"Sophisticated yet accessible, this sonorous work addresses life in an unillusioned way and will appeal widely." * 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."---Keene Carter, Colorado Review

Author Bio

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 (Princeton), which was chosen by the New York Times as one of the ten best poetry books of the year; and At Lake Scugog (Princeton). His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Best American Poetry, McSweeneys, and many other publications. He is professor of philosophy at California State University, Chico. Website www.troyjollimore.com Twitter @TroyJollimore