The Mechanical Bird Asa Boxer
Poetry
Winner of the CAA Award for Poetry
An old idea of reality animates the poems in The Mechanical Bird: things are never what they seem. Opening with a quick-talking disquisition on lying (“Keep it simple, tidy, / take a noncommittal stance”) and ending with masterly meditation on the workshop and its “drawing-board dreams,” Asa Boxer’s debut constantly tests the claims of authenticity over artifice. Objects, settings and everyday details are swept up in an imagination that can never quite shake the sense of the visible world—even nature itself—as an artful mixture of fact and invention. As suggested by the eponymous metal songster, these poems are exquisitely crafted, infused with a sense of kinetic spell-making, and sing with an exuberant trust in their own guile.
Asa Boxer, interviewed on Ryerson University's CKLN 88.1
Asa Boxer won first prize in the 2005 CBC/enRoute poetry competition for his poem cycle entitled “The Workshop,” which is included in The Mechanical Bird. His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in London Magazine, Arc, Books in Canada, Maisonneuve and CNQ. He lives in Montreal.
Praise for Asa Boxer’s work:
“There is a panoramic quality to this book, which takes us into the heart of the natural and man-made worlds, offers insights on war and terror, and penetrates the lives of individuals and relationships. Despite the collection’s scope, it possesses great integrity of voice and vision. These poems often unveil warring drives or concepts at the very core of existence.” —Montreal Review of Books
ISBN: 978-1-55065-227-7