In WEIRDING, Lindsey Boldt invites the reader into bewilderment--to travel with her across states of consciousness and affective registers and search for a means of survival within an empire set to self-destruct mode. Inhabiting an array of guises and postures to act as both speaker and receiver, Boldt flips a switch and her body becomes a conduit, a site of experiment: My hand is my antenna / and it works. Squirrels offer instruction, portals pop open, and the old gods command the poet, Be on my back for it / Be on my back for / a wild thing to have. It is the gift of Boldt's poetry that this wildness--the transmutation of existential dread into futures worthy of the excessive ecstasies of Charli XCX--becomes ours through her invitation to join the circle of her word: I had a magic connection / but needed you to / make it go.

Poetry.