Bill Seaton has been at it for many a years, his work ranging from teaching poetry in the prisons, running a long time poetry series, and the hometown College of Poetry for several years, along with a vast and most instructive blog containing translations from classical literature, Horace, articles on Greek and Latin writers, essays on dadaism, beat poetry, travels to Asia and beyond, literary criticism and comment on contemporary writers, Trollop, theories of dreams, etc. Seaton is a modern American humanist, a well merited designation for one born into a culture ever more constricting and commercial.

The poems in Planetary Motions are equally wide ranging in theme. 

Other Seasons is the first of the book’s seven poems dealing with a Men’s Clubhouse in Chihuahua, Dubrovnik, a poem describing in deft verse the workings of a clock Place de l’Horloge, Avignon, an aesthetic delight. Such is the aim of the poet, with styles varied through the collection of a piece with the theme he deals with as he subjectively and modestly proceeds. A Vision of the Invisible’s first six lines refer to Poland and its Bric-a brac, food, etc. and ends, “From all these towns what’s missing is the Jews,” a powerful statement about the silence in these countries about the murder of millions in their countries and, also, a topic rare in our poetry. “The Wind” from Divigations well illustrates Seaton’s approach, going from breath, mountains, mice, atomic weights, cities, gravitation…all of which “add one more thread…unto my own self’s skein.”

Appetites in part is a section describing the effects of foods on the poet…“Feast”: