This was a re-read. I was near a used bookstore and (apparently) in the mood for the kind of visceral, tear your heart and innards out, poetry Olds excels at. She was at NYU the same time I was (her as faculty, me as grad student) so I’ve seen her a read a few times (including poems from this book). I don’t know that I can recommend that: these are the kind of very intense, super personal, definitely biographic FEELING whether they are or not (along the lines of “diary exposing”), poems that…well, you have to be prepared for it. I’d rather read this kind of poetry alone! 🙂