Sympathy for the Couriers is a collection of messages from the border region of our lives—that vast allegorized territory of cheap self-deceptions and illusions. By turns comical and grim, these new poems feature Peter Richardson at his most ventriloquistic. The “couriers” in question are the banged-up, long-suffering, Dantesque voices who, speaking through the poet, deliver their news: heartfelt, often heartbreaking admissions that, nonetheless, are always buoyant with aphoristic brio and panache. But the most important messenger here is Richardson himself, who having establishing a reputation as one of Canada’s best poets, has given us his most challenging book.