Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    At Lake Scugog: Poems
    At Lake Scugog: Poems
    At Lake Scugog: Poems
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    At Lake Scugog: Poems

    By Troy Jollimore

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    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 "snappy, entertaining book." A triumphant follow-up to that acclaimed debut, At Lake Scugog demonstrates why the San Francisco Chronicle has called Troy Jollimore "a new and exciting voice in American poetry."


    Jollimore is a professional philosopher, and in witty and profound ways his formally playful poems dramatize philosophical subjects--especially the individual's relation to the larger world, and the permeable, constantly shifting border between "inner" and "outer." For instance, the speaker of "The Solipsist," suspecting that the entire world "lives inside of your skull," wonders "why / God would make ear and eye / to face outward, not in." And Tom Thomson--a character who also appeared in Jollimore’s first book--finds 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 "on the inside," so that he can warn the world before "intruding on’t."
    ______



    From At Lake Scugog:
    LOBSTERS


    Troy Jollimore
    ?


    tend to cluster in prime numbers, sub-
    oceanic bundles of bug consciousness
    submerged in waking slumber, plunged in pits
    of murk-black water. They have coalesced


    out of the pitch and grime and salt suspended
    within that atmospheric gloom. Their skin
    is colorless below. But when exposed
    to air, they start to radiate bright green,


    then, soon, a siren red that wails: I’m dead.
    The meat inside, though, is as white as teeth,
    or the hard-boiled egg that comes to mind
    when one cracks that crisp shell and digs beneath.


    Caress the toothy claw-edge of its pincer
    and you will know the single, simple thought
    that populates its mind. The lobster trap is elegance
    itself: one moving part: the thing that’s caught.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateMar 14, 2011
    ISBN9781400838233
    At Lake Scugog: Poems
    Author

    Troy Jollimore

    Troy Jollimore is the author of two previous collections of poetry, At Lake Scugog (Princeton) and Tom Thomson in Purgatory, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, McSweeney's, the Believer, and other publications. He is a professor of philosophy at California State University, Chico.

    Read more from Troy Jollimore

    Related to At Lake Scugog

    Titles in the series (26)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Listening To The Past

      Sep 2, 2021

      Listening To The Past
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      like a ghost ship in spacesomething see-through how the moon used to besomething impalpable untouchableor when you go to touch it your hand goes through itsomething haunted it takes something hauntedto haunt you like a lakelike a half a head of hair

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Time Is Now

      Jun 13, 2018

      Although we often associate travel writing with essays about journeys or roadtrip novels, poetry has had a long, rich history of association with travel. Many nineteenth- and twentieth-century poems explore wanderlust and faraway locales and new mode

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      TALKING POINTS The Write Stuff

      Aug 6, 2020

      TALKING POINTS The Write Stuff
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2024

      I can’t understand, after years of reading, the relevanceof metaphysics. How does it account for the wants of my mind breaking apart my body? I prefer to think of poppies,the variety fated to bloom blood-red. Or, of planting poppies, any flowers in t

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Art of Poetry No. 109

      Sep 8, 2020

      The Art of Poetry No. 109
      31 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Element of Silence: The Millions Interviews N. Scott Momaday

      Jul 20, 2022

      "Too many people just write down things in haste that look like poetry, but they’re not." The post The Element of Silence: The Millions Interviews N. Scott Momaday appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Land of My Poem

      Mar 8, 2022

      The Land of My Poem
      16 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What Living In A House Is Like

      May 1, 2022

      Standing in each stanza—no, I’m sorry—room. Standing in each room waslike standing in a tester stroke of wall paint. All these blobs of colors in rows and columns, the size of thumbs.Together—a portrait of potential. But blues leaped to yellow leaped

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Aēsop® and THE PARIS REVIEW

      Jun 18, 2024

      The story of Aesop’s partnership with The Paris Review is one plotted by a deep reverence for the written word. Since 2015, we have been proud to offer this esteemed quarterly for purchase in select stores across the globe and at aesop.com, inviting

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Beatrice Kilat

      Dec 13, 2019

      By that I mean that he’s a little practical and a little dreamy, a little horny and a little precious, which is just how I like a person. The post A Year in Reading: Beatrice Kilat appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Toward A Unified Theory

      Jan 1, 2022

      Condemned to live inside the weatherof our moods What are you doing? Filling this bucket with waterand dumping it into the water They can’t excavate the amphitheater further because it extends backbeneath the houses We close their eyes not for thembu

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry

      Feb 6, 2024

      Bang out hundreds of pages of rhyming couplets about something other than your identity or your perceptions, and you, too, will likely fall out of love with lyric poetry. The post Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems by Rohan Chhetri

      Sep 8, 2020

      All summer the half voice lurked behind me & I played deaf for days for to live To not write about it to use my body Part the river’s flesh to operate Machinery is human too to love & for once stay awake through it all. Now it comes like the deer sle

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      AI’s Present Matters More Than Its Imagined Future

      Oct 4, 2023

      Last month, I found myself in a particular seat. A few places to my left was Elon Musk. Down the table to my right sat Bill Gates. Across the room sat Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, and not too far to his left was Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Goo

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Picture A Poem

      Sep 1, 2022

      Picture A Poem
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Decision [de-, Caedere-, Latin]

      Mar 1, 2024

      Life is a series of decisions to move this poster to another room; that ass to some other chair.There isn’t really much to it, and then we’re done for. There was a time I wrote, seriously, about grief. I wonder whyI can’t do that anymore. Maybe it’s

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Jun 14, 2022

      Peak gust and west of July.Wind is full-song-singing wings,full-on whistling grass saturation. The aftercast (neither wet-bulb noroldfield lark, not dry punch, notdiablo wind) an atlas of starling- like neglect, flock-overlook. Emily Dickinson wrote:

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Pitch Like A Pro

      Jun 14, 2023

      Pitch Like A Pro
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age

      Jun 11, 2019

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Must-Read Poetry: Winter 2024

      Jan 9, 2024

      Poetry editor Summer Farah spotlights five remarkable poetry collections out this winter. The post Must-Read Poetry: Winter 2024 appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Silvia Guerra

      Jun 9, 2020

      The dry, black branches of winter seen in flight run singing. Come here to drink translucent drops on fresh leaves. Come over here, and try to light that wick. If you descend from the summit, humming, perhaps I can see you, perhaps at the river’s cur

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Bhanu Kapil

      Mar 15, 2019

      Everything is red. The trees look like they’re bending over. The lorry is approaching the village. Nurpur. Don’t tell anyone it was Nurpur. Just say it was any old village. A motorbike was coming from the opposite direction. The driver of the motorbi

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Reactions

      Apr 12, 2023

      Feedback from readers Gabriella Graceffo’s outstanding article about a toxic workshop (“Pigeons, Pride, and Pedagogy: Surviving a Toxic Workshop,” March/April 2023) should be required reading for all workshop participants. She is spot-on when she wri

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for At Lake Scugog

    4/5

    3 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      At Lake Scugog - Troy Jollimore

      Acknowledgments

      I  BURN BAG

      THE SOLIPSIST

      Don’t be misled:

      that sea-song you hear

      when the shell’s at your ear?

      It’s all in your head.

      That primordial tide—

      the slurp and salt-slosh

      of the brain’s briny wash—

      is on the inside.

      Truth be told, the whole place,

      everything that the eye

      can take in, to the sky

      and beyond into space,

      lives inside of your skull.

      When you set your sad head

      down on Procrustes’ bed,

      you lay down the whole

      universe. You recline

      on the pillow: the cosmos

      grows dim. The soft ghost

      in the squishy machine,

      which the world is, retires.

      Someday it will expire.

      Then all will go silent

      and dark. For the moment,

      however, the blackness

      is just temporary.

      The planet you carry

      will shortly swing back

      from the far nether regions.

      And life will continue—

      but only within you.

      Which raises a question

      that comes up again and again,

      as to why

      God would make ear and eye

      to face outward, not in?

      AT LAKE SCUGOG

      1

      Where what I see comes to rest,

      at the edge of the lake,

      against what I think I see

      and, up on the bank, who I am

      maintains an uneasy truce

      with who I fear I am,

      while in the cabin’s shade, the gap between

      the words I said

      and those I remember saying

      is just wide enough to contain

      the remains that remain

      of what I assumed I knew.

      2

      Out in the canoe, the person I thought you were

      gingerly trades spots

      with the person you are

      and what I believe I believe

      sits uncomfortably next to

      what I believe.

      When I promised I will always give

      you what I want you to want,

      you heard, or desired to hear,

      something else. As, over and in the lake,

      the cormorant and its image

      traced paths through the sky.

      REGRET

      I’d like to take back my not saying to you

      those things that, out of politeness, or caution,

      I kept to myself. And, if I may—

      though this might perhaps stretch the rules—I’d like

      to take back your not saying some of the things

      that you never said, like I love you and "Won’t you

      come home with me," or telling me, which

      you in fact never did, perhaps in the newly

      refurbished café at the Vancouver Art

      Gallery as fresh drops of the downpour from which

      we’d sought shelter glinted in your hair like jewels,

      or windshields of cars as seen from a plane

      that has just taken off or is just coming in

      for a landing, when the sun is at just the right angle,

      that try as you might, you could not imagine

      a life without me. The passionate spark

      that would have flared up in your eye as you said this—

      if you had said this—I dream of it often.

      I won’t take those back, those dreams, though I would,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1