To borrow one of Trumpov’s con-man locutions, everybody knows this announcement is about scaring voters away and undermining the public’s trust in elections.

I kept a list of such locutions as I was reading — an “index of themes,” to borrow the title of the opening poem.

An awkward locution, but it appeases the sensitivity police.

The New Hampshire Democrat, who got elected six years ago by a margin of just 1,017 votes, uses an unmistakably New England locution to describe her state’s voters: “Wicked independent.”

These locutions clutter Seymour’s book, especially since what we do know of Rhys’s life and career is, if not encyclopedic, a good deal.