To See The Queen: Poems (Karen & Michael Braziller Books)
The phantom presences in Seay’s poems are anything but ethereal. More robust than the haunted and taunted female speakers they inhabit, especially during bouts of physical and mental illness, the specters force questions about subjects no smaller than faith, eternity, and love. Liliana, a recurring “figment,” takes many forms, including “an animal calmed”; “an avalanche, a ledge of snow”; and “the temperature of (my) delirium.” The speakers’ attempts to resist Liliana or engage in dialogues with her ensure that the poems will not devolve into self-pity or passive portraits of victimhood. For Seay, illness and depression are specific places or states; a dozen poems have “Town” in the title. In the devastating narrative poem “Room of the Curved Spines,” a speaker recalls undergoing a routine scoliosis check in junior high, then learning that she will soon have a deformed body, but not in the way the school expects; she will starve herself. “I keep an illusion of her skeleton in bed, the obvious spine,” reflects the speaker, “how it was or was not curved and to what end.” --Carolyn Alessio