The poems in Parlance thrash against the matrix of their own referential nature using a series of linguistic echoes that reference writers like the 'maternal' Virginia Woolf or the 'paternal' Leonard Cohen. The rebellious child of Zelazo's text splinters its Modernist and Canadian parentage to occupy an uncharted linguistic space somewhere between excess and void. These poems are painterly, splintered, majestic. An accomplishedfirst book of poetry, Parlance is an act of becoming, and of coming home.