Weirding

Description

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.

This is one of the scariest and funniest books I read all pandemic. I want the possibility that Lindsey's work gives me. This book drives forward with frankness and disarms with delicious immediacy, the way a hot fry would, if the poet were to just reach across the dinner table and put one in your mouth. I want to be so sincere, so utterly earnest that it makes me chuckle, really chuckle again. Emerging from the bitter and slow molasses of depressive time, these poems enshrine the child-like and nimble urge to check if we are still alive, to quickly lick the finger hoping for something sweet. And we are. And it is. And when the revolution comes, and come it will, who cares if we find ourselves looking less than stylish. We'll be right here and ready, with Lindsey, "ass in the air/ head hollering/ down & in/ every syllable you know/ to wake a beast”
—Divya Victor

Author Bio