National Book Critics Circle Awards

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**Update: Congratulations to Troy Jollimore, who has pulled off a huge upset and taken home the 2006 NBCC for poetry!**

Feeling slightly underwhelmed, slightly mystified by the 2006 NBCC nominees in poetry?  Here's a breakdown of this year's cast of characters...

The Good Old Boy W.D. Snodgrass, Not For Specialists: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions) The best of this collection comes from, perhaps not surprisingly, his 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning first book, and from his kinda scary inside look at Hitler & co. in The Fuhrer Bunker. Some of the newest stuff was decent too.   There is more here, though, and back in June our John Deming discussed why this is a pretty decent collection from a pretty important poet.

The Bad Old Boy Frederick Seidel, Ooga-Booga (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) If you were a general-interest magazine in 2006 and you printed only one profile of a poet, it's likely that the subject was Frederick Seidel.  And why not, he makes a good story—this wealthy and decadent Manhattanite writes unapologetically about riding Ducatis, assorted bodily functions, and the intricacies of humping.  Recently Melinda Wilson examined Ooga-Booga for Coldfront, warts and all.

The Sentimental Favorite Miltos Sachtouris, Poems (1945-1971) (Archipelego Books) Currently in its eighth printing in his native Greece, this collection distills work from Sachtouris's first nine volumes, documenting the poet's development under facist dictatorship, Axis occupation, and their aftermath.  Here, Karen Emmerich's translations give often achingly spare, clear, clean poems, intensely visual and intensely violent.  Sactouris died in 2005, having never quite gotten the international recognition that he probably deserves. Consider him the favorite.

The Pretty Decent Safety Daisy Fried, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again (University of Pittsburgh Press) Daisy Fried's lyrical work has been generally well received and this NBCC nod is one more in a rather respectable string of accolades.  In September, David Sewell checked to see what all the fuss was about, and was left shrugging.

The Nice Guy Nobody Has Heard Of Troy Jollimore, Tom Thomson in Purgatory (Margie/IntuiT House) Troy Jollimore is a pleasant-looking Nova Scotian with a pleasant-sounding name; unsurprisingly, his first book is a dissertation on friendship.   Thom Thomson in Purgatoryis mostly made up of an extended sequence starring Tom Thomson, a kind of hapless alter-ego for the poet, who allows himself to melt in and out of the action.  Selected for the IntuiT Poetry Series by Billy Collins, Jollimore rounds out a marked preference in David Orr's NBCC poetry panel for clear, narrative, user-friendly work.  Unfortunately, this is probably the nominee that no-one out there has actually read, likely due in large part to the difficulty for a tiny press to reach the masses.  Until Tom Thomson gets out of distribution limbo, chances are the closest you'll get are these selections.  Unless, I guess, you happen to run into Troy Jollimore, in which case I kind of feel like you might get a hug out of the equation, too.