At Lake Scugog

Jollimore's debut, Tom Thompson in Purgatory (2006), surprised almost all observers when it won the NBCC Award. This sophomore effort mostly continues in the first book's nervous, witty, self-conscious, at times self-despising modes. New sonnets about the character Tom Thompson indulge in light comedy ("Who'd I blurb? Or who did I let// blurb me?"), but retain the moving undertones of fear: "His curse,// which he curses with all his heart, is to hate this curs-/ ing, hating heart of his." Pantoun, epigram, terza rima, puns, and invented forms with new rhyming requirements make much of the volume a pleasure in terms of technique. Always clever, at times Jollimore can be merely clever, his search for a topic the only topic that can keep him on track. It is a kind of writing perfected already by an earlier generation, by John Hollander and Daryl Hine. Altogether different and hard to forget are the poems on which Jollimore concludes: stern, vulnerable, lyrical reactions to environmental peril. The 10-page "His Master's Voice," addressed apparently to a child, looks at the future of civilization, at our culpable arrogance, and at how "songs" might help set us right. (May)