Surviving a murder attempt generates the clarity, compression and pure celebratory drive of this book’s title sequence of fourteen syllabic sonnets. These form the spinal cord of the entire collection, from which nerve endings reach out into a dizzying range of poetic matter, while retaining the book’s essential coherence and integrity and what Maura Dooley calls "Fiona Sampson’s incisive, inquisitive, painterly eye".