This slender book of poems comes with a CD of the author reading all the poems and sometimes giving explanatory notes along the way. While not as outwardly visceral at his earlier Book of Nightmares, his poems are still extraordinary. Reading the book along with listening to the author, one can see the evidence of working and re-working the poems, as they are not the same in both formats. This leaves the reader not only to figure out the words on the page, but also to figure out why certain lines were changed or, in some cases, omitted. There are quite a few poems here that deserve a second read, which is about the highest praise one can give a poem. ( )