Skullduggery

The poems in Skullduggery, Asa Boxer's masterful new book, have a simple warning: trust nothing. Like the book's hilarious final poem, which recasts Canada's discovery as a hoax from the Middle Ages-Boxer transforms shortfalls of perception into tour de force performances. Drawing on a deepened range of forms (comic set-pieces, verse-plays, dramatic monologues) Skullduggery embraces deception as both theme and tactic. In poem after poem, encounters test the threshold of what's real and what's not; turns of phrase appear to say one thing, but really mean another. What is without doubt, however, is that Boxer strengthens his status as one of our most gifted young poets.