Syllabus of Errors: Poems (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets)

Description

. . . we are fixed to perpetrate the species―     I meant perpetuate―as if our duty were coupled with our terror. As if beauty     itself were but a syllabus of errors. Troy Jollimore's first collection of poems won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was hailed by the New York Times as "a snappy, entertaining book," and led the San Francisco Chronicle to call him "a new and exciting voice in American poetry." And his critically acclaimed second collection expanded his reputation for poems that often take a playful approach to philosophical issues. While the poems in Syllabus of Errors share recognizable concerns with those of Jollimore’s first two books, readers will also find a voice that has grown more urgent, more vulnerable, and more sensitive to both the inevitability of tragedy and the possibility of renewal. Poems such as "Ache and Echo," "The Black-Capped Chickadees of Martha’s Vineyard," and "When You Lift the Avocado to Your Mouth" explore loss, regret, and the nature of beauty, while the culminating long poem, "Vertigo," is an elegy for a lost friend as well as a fantasia on death, repetition, and transcendence (not to mention the poet’s favorite Hitchcock film). Ingeniously organized into sections that act as reflections on six quotations about birdsong, these poems are themselves an answer to the question the poet asks in "On Birdsong": "What would we say to the cardinal or jay, / given wings that could mimic their velocities?" Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents I ON BIRDSONG On Birdsong Inventory Ache and Echo On the Origins of Things Critique of Judgment Homer Oriole Past Imperfect II ON BEAUTY On Beauty Syllabus of Errors Cutting Room My Book Going Viral Bone Possession Death by Landscape Second Wind The Black-Capped Chickadees of Martha’s Vineyard III ON BLINDNESS On Blindness The Apples Charlie Brown Some Men The Proselytizers Universal Photograph Polaroid Model 1000 OneStep, Circa 1978 Ars Poetica The New Joys IV WHEN YOU LIFT THE AVOCADO TO YOUR MOUTH Tamara The Task More Broken than Yours Fireworks Lament The Fourteen-Hour Orgasm Not Enough Poem for the Abandoned Titan Missile Silos Just North of Chico, California Autumn Day (after Rilke) The Small Rain When You Lift the Avocado to Your Mouth V VERTIGO Vertigo VI CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT [maybe I just need time to grieve] Notes and Acknowledgments