Tom Thomson In Purgatory [Paperback]

Troy Jollimore (Author), Billy Collins (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2006

Tom Thomson In Purgatory is a collection of poetry from the creator of "Tom Thomson", a literary character whom former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins claims to be "a verbal phantom, the result of the poet's word-spinning, but at the same time we lean forward to believe in him--our hero for the moment, a man of the hour..."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Reading this book, you are bound to take both Tom Thomson and his creator to your heart." --BILLY COLLINS, former U.S. Poet Laureate

"Don't take this book anywhere laughing out loud would be indecorous." --JAMES RICHARDSON, Interglacial: New and Selected Poems and Aphorisms

About the Author

Troy Jollimore, a native of Nova Scotia, Canada, holds a P.h.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University. Currently he teaches at California State University, Chico.

Product Details

• Paperback: 97 pages
• Publisher: Margie / IntuiT House; First Edition edition (August 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971904057
• ISBN-13: 978-0971904057
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Troy Jollimore's debut collection of poetry, Tom Thomson in Purgatory (Margie / Intuit House), won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2006. He is also the author of a chapbook, The Solipsist (Bear Star Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in publications including Poetry, The Believer, McSweeney's, The Walrus, EXILE Quarterly, and the New Yorker. He has a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University and currently teaches philosophy in northern California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars people form strange patterns, January 5, 2007

By 

C. Elliott (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tom Thomson In Purgatory (Paperback)

Near the center of Troy Jollimore's book come the following lines: "and people form strange patterns, fields, as if / a magnet he, and iron filings they." The people in this book, particularly the protagonist, form strange and compelling patterns. When we first glimpse Tom Thomson he's fishing and playing solitaire: "Each time he loses, / he throws his cards into the water. / Each time he wins / he catches a trout."

The relationship between the characters and the world they inhabit is quirky--sometimes charming, sometimes sad, sometimes extremely funny. It's always complicated, and not in the conventional ways that poems often throw their readers. In Jollimore's poems we always know exactly what has happened in the literal sense. We can picture it, summarize a plot, name the main characters, and even tell some choice stories about them. Yet something important remains mysterious, inexplicable, impossible to pinpoint. The mystery (and the relentless variation in the long sonnet series) keeps you reading.

Along the way, you acquire some questions:
"And what of water, / which looks like glass but does not shatter? / And what of air? And what of the soul? / Are we glass or are we water? And where / does the child go who wants this answered?"

And you learn a plethora of reasons why Tom Thomson likes a place:
"because the satellites cannot see it" and because the trout come and stop there, because parsley and wild tomatoes grow on the banks, and because of the way "his canoe fits the water" and "the water fits the earth."

And you even get an invitation to slough off your own identity for a bit (in "How to Get There"):

When you reach the village
(the cluster of white houses)
stop and discard the map.
Also get rid of the passengers.
From here on they'd only weigh you down.
Leave them by the side of the road. You'll need
a new identity. Call yourself `Gary.'
Say that you're in `insurance.'

My advice is to call yourself Gary, take the detour, and spend some time in Jollimore's beautiful and strangely patterned world.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Digging for treasure..., November 29, 2007

By 

David Kirk Macleod "Bibliophile" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tom Thomson In Purgatory (Paperback)

There is no question that critics are correct in saying that Troy Jollimore is the next great American poet... but let's just remember that he is Canadian. I think it important that every once in a while Canadians make that claim on him, lest it be forgotten...

There is a decidedly Canadian feel - at least to this Canadian - to his poems of the fictitious Tom Thomson. To see the inner life of Tom is to see an honesty and depth lacking in most poetry and absent in most fiction. The poetry involving Tom Thomson is a character study of unnerving depth which fascinates and draws the reader in to the truth of Tom.

While I enjoy the titular Tom Thomson series of poems, it is the many other works here which move me the most... especially "Height of my Powers" which, in its simplicity and simple setting reveals the strength of love and the little things: The simple dress/ that you say looks like an apron, that I won't/ admit how much I adore, because/ I don't want you to stop wearing it.

What bibliophile can resist "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Ruined by Reading the Cantos of Ezra Pound: Or, Song of my Shelf" with its constant use of book titles and literary reference (and of course that great film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) and quiet denouement: Little friend, little friend,/ fall on your knees./ Let it come down./ Call it sleep.

Of course, connecting back to my rural Canadian upbringing I can't help but love "From the Boy Scout Manual". Not how I remember Boy Scouts...but I think I like Troy's version better: If gold, jewels or currency/ are turned up during the process, they/ belong to the scout who owns the shovel.

In reading Troy Jollimore's Tom Thomson in Purgatory, happily, you are that scout...

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deftly adroit at writing both free verse and prose poetry., May 12, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tom Thomson In Purgatory (Paperback)

An academician who currently serves on the faculty of California State University, Canadian poet Troy Jollimore is deftly adroit at writing both free verse and prose poetry. "Tom Thomson In Purgatory" is a compilation of his best work and proved to be the 2005 winner of the Robert E. Lee & Ruth I. Wilson Poetry Book Award. Imaginative, lyrical, compelling, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and highly recommended reading, here is a body of work that will well serve to demonstrate and document Troy Jollimore as one of the best of his generation. `After': If we must speak of each other, let it be/in the forms that monarchs and generals use/to refer to their rivals; as if each were known/to the other only through field reports/and classified intelligences. Let it be/in tones of wariness, grudging respect, and,/where permitted, mutual admiration./Let our campaign be conducted on these terms.//And if people speak of the `break-up,'/let us hear in that the cold overtones/of the word as applied to a glacier: how,/new light found an entry, and the gleaming designs,/a kaleidoscope view-a lens through which/itself to be seen-as the fragments, mindless/and pure, frigid yet free, plunged/to the sea, that vast, that resolute,/that insensate, that insatiable sea.