Sexton's Pulitzer-winning collection, arranged in order of composition as a journal of suicidal crisis, survival, and ambivalent recovery. Where Plath burns with cold anger, Sexton is warmer and more direct; her confessional mode is more nakedly therapeutic. "Wanting to Die" is one of the most honest poems ever written about depression's seduction. Her witchcraft and fairy tale sequences (in Transformations) came later; Live or Die is the rawest.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.