"Ace Boggess’s brilliantly original book consists entirely of poems with interrogative titles and unexpected responses in verse. It is not merely a collection but a unified book. The first question is, 'Do You Have Any Advice for Inmates?' Boggess has the right to answer because he has done time. In one poem, he describes himself as an 'unemployed ex-con hiding in a red state' (he also has a law degree). These are real poems, not the products of some enlightened prison workshop. With wit and a wonderful speed of association, Boggess addresses such subjects as luck, loss, music, adultery, drugs, and guns, with references, sometimes surprising, to Hamlet, the Serenity prayer, the Divine, Van Morrison, 'the Schopenhauer of punk,' and Don Giovanni, among other cultural landmarks. The book has charm and humor, and it is also deeply moving: 'You’d like to be / the hero once, but it’s you who walked through gates / afraid, as though you’ve been on trial all your life.'”
—David Lehman