Troy Jollimore

Troy Jollimore is a poet, philosopher, and literary critic.

Career and education

Troy Jollimore
Born	1971 Liverpool, Novia Scotia
Occupation	Poet and Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico
Education	Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University

Troy Jollimore was born in 1971 in Liverpool, Nova Scotia and attended the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University in 1999, under the direction of Harry Frankfurt and Gilbert Harman. He has lived in the U.S. since 1993 and is currently Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico. He has been an External Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center (2006–07), the Stanley P. Young Fellow in Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference (2012), and a Guggenheim Fellow (2013).

Jollimore's philosophical writings frequently concern ethical issues connected to personal relationships. His first book, Friendship and Agent-Relative Morality, was published in 2001; his second, Love's Vision, appeared in 2011, and his third, On Loyalty, in 2012. He has also published on topics including the ethics of terrorism, the depiction of evil in literature, the nature of happiness, and so-called "admirable immorality."

His first collection of poetry, Tom Thomson in Purgatory, won the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry in 2006. In an interview with the Los Angeles Review Of Books, Jollimore insisted that books should include reoccurring concepts and consistent details that connect the story. He believed the rough sketch of the book shouldn't be self-serving with the business of selling the book and rather, this collective theory of grabbing ideas makes an excellent book for the reader. It was also nominated for the 2007 Poets' Prize, and individual poems in the collection received nominations for the Pushcart Prize. His second collection, At Lake Scugog, appeared in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets in 2011. In the same interview from the Los Angeles Review of Books, Jollimore believed Tom Thomson in Purgatory had to be realistic in his actual narrative and that the new poems of At Lake Scugog serve as a continuation. Jollimore argues that poetry should be free and allow the poet to tinker some more on the poem.

His third, Syllabus of Errors, was published in the same series and was selected by the New York Times as one of the "Best Poetry Books of 2015." In an interview from Princeton University Press, Jollimore explained the name of the book comes from a suggestive list of blasphemies within the real Syllabus of Errors and how all of these were meant for the followers of Catholicism to stay away from. However, Jollimore included many intentional mistakes in the opening lines of the poem as a way to further investigate why they exist and the incredible abilities linked to them. Jollimore furthered explained that poems shouldn't be accurate with form every single time and rather, unpacking the myths of English language.

Jollimore's poems have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Believer, McSweeney's, and Poetry. He is also a frequent book reviewer, writing for the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, and the Boston Review, among others.

Views

Some of his academic work relates to ethics in regards to normality, ethical nihilism, ethics connecting to personal relations (especially with companionship and romantic relations), the ethics between extreme terrorist acts and with the war on terror, and the natural world within reasoning and the theory of aesthetics.

Jollimore's philosophical writings frequently concern ethical issues connected to personal relationships. His first book, Friendship and Agent-Relative Morality, was published in 2001.

His second book, Love's Vision, appeared in 2011. Within the Philosophy in Review article from 2012 , Jollimore argued that you cannot discover love if you see a person for all the things they hold onto because then it's no mystery in regards to true purpose. His book Love's Vision can be identified as a way to look at the restrictions on loving someone and how modernized it is seen within romantic relationships.

Jollimore's third book, On Loyalty, came out in 2012. He has also published on topics including the ethics of terrorism, the depiction of evil in literature, the nature of happiness, and so-called "admirable immorality."

Jollimore has discussed questionable issues on personal relationships in relation to Artificial intelligence in his Midwest Studies in Philosophy article 'This Endless Space between the Words.' He argues the real debate on artificial intelligence to act in the same way as a person in the movie Her. Jollimore completely probes the dynamics of giving a demonstration on how the robot would demonstrate love to a person and try to authenticate love like a human being. However, Jollimore reveals the only way to validate this type of behavior is by completing the Turing Test. Jollimore analyzes the Turing test as a probability to giving human life with the robot. In fact, Jollimore furthered his theory when he examined the authenticated view of a person's emotion by looking at video games.

Books

Poetry collections

• Tom Thomson in Purgatory. MARGIE / Intuit House. 2006.
• The Solipsist. Bear Star Press. 2008.
• At Lake Scugog. Princeton University Press. 2011.
• Syllabus of Errors. Princeton University Press. 2015.

Philosophy

• Friendship and Agent-Relative Morality. Garland Publishing. 2001.
• Love's Vision. Princeton University Press. 2011.
• On Loyalty. Routledge. 2012.

External links

• Troy Jollimore's website at CSU Chico
• Guggenheim Foundation website
• New York Times "Best Poetry Books of 2015"
• Author info page on Poets & Writers site
• San Francisco Chronicle review of Tom Thomson in Purgatory by John Freeman
• New York Times Book Review review of Tom Thomson in Purgatory by James Longenbach
• Publishers Weekly review of At Lake Scugog
• ForeWord review of At Lake Scugog by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth
• Review of Love's Vision at 'Philosophy in Review'
• "On the Origins of Things" (poem)
• "The Solipsist" (poem)