Cat Woodward is playing cat and mouse with the reader, though whatever the poet is hiding, the music makes it worth the chase. Her voice is strange, a wary whisper, unwilling to let the reader put the puzzle together, to gather anything beyond the immaculate and cryptic symphony, but therein lies the poem’s magic. It’s a cacophony of images and sensations united in a swift movement, though something almost sinister seems to be diffused throughout the stanzas, something animal and alert; Joyce in a slasher film, monologuing. This is just to say, Woodward has composed a poem of extraordinary depth, one that I will be rereading for years to come.
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