Inter Alia

Douglas Barbour is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.
He is the author of Lyric/anti-lyric : Essays on Contemporary Poetry,
Breath Takes, and Fragmenting Body Etc.

The title of Seymour’s first book fits its contents perfectly: it
demonstrates a range of subject matter and tone that suggests its author
is craftily at home among many things and persons, and has found a
variety of ways to articulate the various ways of being in the world.
Seymour’s poems are full of wit, but they also offer metaphorical hits
galore as well as slyly comic philosophical turns. One can easily see
the influence (acknowledged, to be sure) of Don McKay’s work, but
Seymour has found his own voices, and the poems in Inter Alia are no
copycats.

The collection begins with 11 poems on semi-precious stones, wherein
Seymour demonstrates his metaphoric reach and ability to tell a tall
tale in a very small space. “Black Opal,” for example is “a
nothing on the x-ray / of things. But it occupies space / with the
opacity of a cataracted eye.” In the title section, the poems move
toward a more traditional narrative stance, but Seymour’s eye for the
slightly eccentric take keeps them and his readers off balance.

Seymour shifts gears again in “Head Arrangements: Twelve-String Poems
for Huddie Ledbetter,” a series of haibun whose final lines are taken
from Lead Belly’s blues. It’s a lovely conceit, and he imagines
moments in the singer’s life clearly based on biographical research.
“Inter Alios” contains a series of apostrophes; “Fugue for the
Gulf of Mexico” is a performance piece for three voices. Seymour
impresses with his range and vitality in all these different kinds of
poems. They often begin in comedy only to turn to something darker and
deeper, but always with a sense of how language can enter into the very
heart of things.