Magnetic and expansive, these poems almost seamlessly thread together the sacred and the sensual, the liminal and the tangible, the spiritual and the physical, the extraordinary and the mundane. Izenson’s linguistic precision grounded in gripping, embodied earthy verb and metaphor usage sent chills down my spine on almost every page and drew me into the cosmic collaboration of creation in ways I didn’t expect. While these poems are so unlike most of the poetry I love and included some portions I couldn't fully wrap my head around, I found that, overall, these poems offered a lot of liberation for me as a reader, writer, and dreamer of different worlds. If you can handle trans Jewish surrealism and sexuality, if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to experience a dream while wide awake, if you can appreciate the space where pleasure and pain overlap, then perhaps, you’ll find these poems offer some liberation for you as well.

Having learned of this book via tantalizing articles about Pittard’s divorce from a fellow writer, I worried I would find this unusual memoir less interesting than the version of her story offered by Vulture and The New York Times. I’ve almost always appreciated a good memoir but I worried my weird fascination with literary exposés on the relationships between writers would overshadow any deep pull to her writing I might have experienced. Fortunately for me, the emotional weight and intrigue of this book far overshadowed my experiences reading those articles. By the end, I felt reading this book had been like watching a train barrel towards a pedestrian in the middle of a crossroads, anticipating the collision, foreseeing the carnage, and still not being able to turn away. I was captivated practically from start to finish.

While Pittard’s style can be at times abrasive and superior, I also found it surprisingly vulnerable, insightful, and, at times, even brave. I was impressed by the various skills she juggled and choices she made throughout this book. Most notably, her ability to imply so much with so little context, her decisions on how to balance the gap between the emotional truth and the situational truth, and her commitment to exposing her own flaws in the midst of highlighting those of her platonic and romantic exes.

In more ways than I anticipated, this memoir challenged me to think about the bigger picture of how we as humans relate to each other and to ourselves. How do our privileges and insecurities intersect within our psyche? How do the misguided ways we define love hinder our ability to access genuine relationship? What do conflicts between our self-perception and the perception others have of us tell us about who we really are and what we really need from ourselves and others? How many tiny betrayals does it take for a large one to be within reach? And for those of us who are writers, where does our duty lie when crafting our art: to what people/relationships, what truth, what goals?

While this memoir is definitely not for everybody due both to its format and its author’s positionality, I’m happy to say as both a reader and writer, I found this memoir was definitely for me. I look forward to taking some of what I’ve gained from this book and infusing it into my own memoir work in the future.

[I received a free copy of this book from Zeitgeist Publishing, an imprint of Penguin Random House.]

After appreciating but, to some extent, struggling through DBT Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide to Dialectical Behavior, I found this book to be refreshingly accessible from start to finish. Hiller describes the DBT skills in language that feels easier to process and use with high school students than the language offered in DBT Made Simple. The latter sections offering strategies for navigating specific scenarios and overviews of each section of the book did an excellent job tying the book together and providing a path for continuing to use the book going forward. Since starting this book, I've found myself reaching for it at least once a week during my conversations with students and I’m excited to use it even more intentionally now that I’ve finished it.

Despite really appreciating the language and organization of this book, I did wish Hiller had included a section at the end of each skill for readers to reflect on their attempts at practicing the skill rather than expecting teen readers to commit to using a separate journal to do that work. I also wish she hadn’t offered the most simplified version of some of the DBT skills (e.g., pros and cons list) as if teenagers couldn’t handle a more complex version (e.g., cost benefits analysis). The simplifications felt like they shortchanged young people of important opportunities to think critically about their behaviors and internalize the principles of DBT in a deeper way.

All in all, I would still definitely recommend this book for teens struggling with anxiety or other dysregulated emotions and for school counselors working with them. My one caveat for counselors would be to make sure to read a more comprehensive guide to DBT before reading this one in order to be able to fill some of the gaps left by Hiller’s simplifications.