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 If it is true, or at least aphoristic, to say that clothes make the man, then what can it mean when the titles of these two books of poetry suggest that disguise makes the woman? Or more specifically, that disguise makes the woman write poetry?

Undercover, Victoria poet Wendy Morton's follow-up book to her 2001 poetic debut, Private Eye, reiterates the first book's metaphor of the poet as private investigator. But in contrast to the trenchcoat and fedora motif of the earlier book, Undercover displays a cover image of a bright kimono that suggests a quieter inquiry into the lyric mode, an investigation that is both joyful and melancholy. Morton assumes the voice of a deliberate coloratura, adopting a let-me-tell-you-sister poetic persona as she offers up a smorgasbord of subject matter. Her facility with the simple declarative statement is particularly pleasing in "Advice" with its invocations to meet the odd world with open arms, and also in "Music" with its play on the limits and largeness of language. Also notable is the succinct "Familiar," which features a cat as a supernatural guide with feet of clay. These short poems please with their staccato rhythms and brief bold commands to pay attention in the world. The wit of "Waiting for Lake Michigan" and the ecstatic fractured narrative of "Pearls" are welcome additions to the volume. More ambitious poems extend their metaphors; Morton reaches for a more rigorous examination of world events in poems like "At that Very Moment" and "Down Wind Fallout." Both poems question the links between indulgent Western desire and a threatened culture. In the commemorative tone of the poems, we can read Morton's reliance upon the efficacy of memory as a mode of survival, though the elegiac quality of the poems suggests that no image survives completely intact. "Conversation on the 24th Floor" and "Circus Music" continue the exploration of the strangeness of grief, something that is elided by the more narrative poems. The unanswerable riddle of "Why is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?" makes thoughtful use of the pantoum form, and suggests a kind of giddy philosophy of inquiry.

What is undercover here? Morton has been busy building a reputation with her "random acts of poetry," a practice she commits to under the aegis of her title as Westjet's official Poet of the Skies, and at every opportunity presented to her by educational and artistic venues across the country. She is a tireless promoter of the public necessity of poetry, and this volume would have benefited from the spark of Morton's poetic activism by including a textual nod to her self-invention as an ambassador for poetry, perhaps in the form of an introductory essay.

Lorri Neilsen Glenn's facility with the candid lyric is a central thematic and stylistic concern in All the Perfect Disguises, her first book of poetry. The temptation to mythologize family history is nearly irresistible in many first books of poetry, and All the Perfect Disguises is no exception. A series of poems in the book's first section traces a family history in Saskatchewan, and the emphasis that Glenn places upon women's history recalls a proto-feminist resilience in the line of female ancestry. "Delivery," a poem in which a horse hitched to a buckboard draws the frozen body of an abusive farmer home to his sleeping family, is most evocative of the prairie ethos, the way life is lived in nearly impossible environmental circumstances. The determined horse is

a locomotive of steady flesh delivering again its
whiskey-laced load to the gate, wheezing steam, reins

slack, shrugging off the knock and clink that drew a sharp
line of sound across the hairless skin of frozen prairie.

The terse two-line stanzas help the poem deliver a crackling tension with an unexpected kind of below-zero ecstasy in the way that one man's death becomes hope for his long-suffering family.

While it is often the aim of poetry to connect the personal to a wider perspective, this is by no means an easy road, and sometimes Glenn struggles to control the balance of lyric and narrative; on occasion, top-heavy plotting keeps the poem grounded when it ought to soar. In "Kitchen," the poet explores father-daughter kinship, but the poem works too hard to convey individual circumstances and does not make the poetic leap to a larger comment on the difficulties between aging men and their adult daughters.

When Glenn fashions a poem to fit standardized rhyme and rhythmic schemes, the result has great appeal and confidence; like Morton, Glenn is most effective when she demands rigor from her form. The long lyrical lines of "The Dress, From Here" mimic the sway of a skirt at the same time as they evoke a wry dirge for "those days that come back to you now and then when your body tells it/ all unwittingly." While the two-page poem "Mop the Floor" gives the reader an insightful snapshot of custodial work in a medical psychiatric facility, the cut-to-the-bone spareness of "Volunteer" beautifully conveys the dynamic between patient and caregiver in a mere nine lines. In the book's second section, Glenn pokes a poetic elbow into the ribs of academic life. "Feminist Theory" underlines the ways that the personal cannot help but be the political; the exuberant fantasy of "Flying with Foucault" will be a delight to all who have logged textual hours with the great French theorist.

All the Perfect Disguises celebrates Glenn as the winner of the Poets' Corner Award for 2003, and her poem "Prairie Home Companions" was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the Poetry category. On the heels of such accolades, a second book cannot be far behind. I only hope that Glenn has kept in reserve a poetic disguise or two for future use.