Designs from the Interior

Hugh Oliver is editor-in-chief at the OISE Press.

This book comprises a series of poems divided into three sections
(“The Suburbs: Delivery,” “The City: Patriarchy,” and “The
Hinterland: Ecology”) that constitute a kind of emotional
autobiography from early childhood to approaching middle age. Most of
the poems explore specific happenings—the milkman with his horse and
wagon, a meeting at a swimming pool, making pastry—in settings that
span both Canada and the United States. The emphasis is on feeling (the
interior life) and body (in particular, the experience of a man who is
gay and who, in a few of the poems, suffers the violent response that
being gay sometimes generates).

In common with a lot of contemporary poetry, the structure is
essentially that of poetic prose arranged in short lines: “Past
midnight, / safe under the covers, / I would play my transistor, / tiny
ventricle of darkness / pressed close to my heart, / flesh-toned
headphones snug, / tapping my left ear.” But in contrast to a lot of
contemporary poetry, Barton’s is fairly easily understood, often
drawing on natural imagery to generate quite powerful metaphors.