Knife Throwing Through Self-Hypnosis

Richardson's second book (after Grunt of the Minotaur) is a visceral and jarring collection that leaps quickly between scenes of haunting beheadings%E2%80%94"[b]oots polished twice to hide the splay"%E2%80%94and snow globe towns where "church bells/ break into a slow dance with the salt breeze." Her musicality and ability to summon unique juxtapositions is enlivened through her semantic prowess. As stark and breathtaking as her phrasing is, though, the collection's greatest drawback is that readers "can't connect her freckles though you've seen them reconfigure/ in the neon all night." For however gripping each poem may be, they struggle to move beyond their formal aesthetic: the poems, as solitary operating machines, are so technically sound that the reading experience feels like viewing a strange diorama from outer space. In the book's opener we're told that "[h]owever deep she cuts,/ it is the blade that bleeds"%E2%80%94the words themselves become the daggers wielded, and often, they overshadow the underlying voice. This detracts from the sense of excitement and surprise which springs from an organic, logical, or associative progression, rather than astute wordplay. Unlike the gods that "go ape-shit at the flame," readers will long for that moment where "a dance floor takes to cheering/ at the onset of a latest hit." (Sept.)