Troy Jollimore: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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On the Origins of Things

 

Everyone knows that the moon started out

as a renegade fragment of the sun, a solar

flare that fled that hellish furnace

and congealed into a flat frozen pond suspended

between the planets. But did you know

that anger began as music, played

too often and too loudly by drunken performers

at weddings and garden parties? Or that turtles

evolved from knuckles, ice from tears, and darkness

from misunderstanding? As for the dominant

thesis regarding the origin of love, I

abstain from comment, nor will I allow

myself to address the idea that dance

began as a kiss, that happiness was

an accidental import from Spain, that the ancient

game of jump-the-fire gave rise

to politics. But I will confess

that I began as an astronomer—a liking

for bright flashes, vast distances, unreachable things,

a hand stretched always toward the furthest limit—

and that my longing for you has not taken me

very far from that original desire

to inscribe a comet's orbit around the walls

of our city, to gently stroke the surface of the stars.

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Troy Jollimore’s poetry collections include Earthly Delights, Syllabus of Errors, which was chosen by the New York Times as one of the ten best poetry books of 2015, and Tom Thomson in Purgatory, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has received fellowships from the Stanford Humanities Center, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has also authored or edited four books of philosophy, including Love’s Vision and On Loyalty. He lives in Northern California, where he teaches philosophy.

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                                                       Jan Steen, The Dancing Couple. Oil on canvas,1663. National Gallery of Art

Comments

[Yongbo Ma]

turtles evolved from knuckles,interesting

[Bill Nevins]

to gently stroke the surface of the stars
Lovely bright star of a poem!

[KC Trommer]

Fantastic work, Troy. Always so great to read your words.

[Beth Joselow]

lovely-- and fun!

[Clarinda Harriss]

Omg. Now I have to write an orgin theory pf my own— but without trying —uselessly— to rival this one! Wow!

[Ann Bracken]

Gorgeous and imaginative speculation about how things evolve. Love it!

[Richard Giannone]

The richness of the poem comes from a deep self-awareness, framed in our daily contradictions of humor.

[Thomas O'Grady]

A very fine love poem!

[Sr. Leslie]

Beautiful…From the very beginning, that spark!…Thanks Terence and Troy!

[Terence Winch]

Leslie---thanks for your comment.

[Cathy Wentzell]

.... we should all start out as astronomers...
Perhaps then, our thoughts and visions would reach further..
I very much enjoyed the imagery of this poem...

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

"ice cream from tears"

[Eileen M. Reich]

I love this amazing poem. The artwork is wonderful as well.

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

Troy Jollimore's "nor will I allow / myself to address the idea that dance / began as a kiss" reminded me of a line often attributed to George Bernard Shaw and, less fathomably, to Robert Frost: "Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire." I also admire the implicit firmament foreplay in the concluding words from Jollimore: "to gently stroke the surface of the stars." Even his surname bespeaks "jolly more" fun with words and images, all impeccably selected and balanced in this HMS Beagle-like voyage to discover and explore the origins of the species, the spicy, and even the specious ironically conveyed by an astute observation like this one: "the ancient / game of jump-the-fire gave rise / to politics." How apt is that now! The first-person narrator of the poem states that "I began as an astronomer--a liking / for bright flashes, vast distances, unreachable things, / a hand stretched always toward the furthest limit." Count me among the readers who were mightily rewarded by tagging along with Jollimore as he reached for "unreachable things."

[Nin Andrews]

Fun and beautiful!

[Lawrence Tjernell]

I rarely use the word, and I more rarely use it for poems sent my way, but this poem, Troy, is brilliant.

[David Lehman]

Thanks for your comment, Lawrence. And yes, Troy's poem is brilliant.