At the first reading, I felt that the Live or Die was a step back from All My Pretty Ones. However, I felt that I needed to read these poems more closely and then doing so increased my appreciation. The poems here are more complex and advanced than All My Pretty Ones much like that collection advanced from To Bedlam And Half-Way Back.

One of Sexton's talents that I missed here is her ability to arrange poems in an order that illuminates the following poems, she does that best in Transformations. Since the poems are arranged in chronological order, that talent isn't used in Live or Die.

Live or Die feels a little false, the poems were not precisely written in order they appear - based on Middlebrook's biography. The book ends with Live - given Sexton's suicide - that's feels a little fake too. She never gave up talking about suicide and was hospitalized for over two weeks in the middle of the Live or Die period. The pacing of the chronological order is off too - because from May 64 to the summer of 65 she didn't write much. She went on a new drug, Thorazine, which hampered creativity in the summer of 64 and spent a lot of time working on a play.

All that was why originally I thought All My Pretty Ones was better, plus AMPO is more about the death of her parents, the relationship with her psychiatrist, and her illicit romance with James Wright which is more interesting to me than suicide.

However, the poems that are in the collection are really good: The Legend of the One Eyed Man, The Addict, Wanting to Die, Little Girl, My String Bean were my favorites. Sexton started writing purely from what she called the depth of her unconscious in this period. Overall they are stronger than what is in AMPO. Sylvia's Death is illuminating because before Plath's suicide, Sexton was the stronger poet. Perhaps it is because of the Bell Jar that Plath seems to be the larger figure now. Reading Middlebrook's biography along side the poems in this period is further illuminating.