“Olds writes “poetry more faithful to the felt truth of reality than any prose could be.” – Richard Wakefield.

Beautiful Girls is not a book for the faint-hearted: it will survive as testament to poetry's force in overcoming - Chris McCabe

Not every man has gentians in his house in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas. - D.H. Lawrence 'Bavarian Gentians'

And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, my heart gives you love. - Walt Whitman 'Dirge For Two Veterans'

At once catalogues of ordinary, precise vision...and poems of musical and metaphysical ambition, Maguire is the heiress of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Adam Phillips, The Observer

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. - Anne Sexton

But the exact place where the self and the other touch, where there's the possibility of either transformation or stasis...that's the place that interests me most. - Jo Shapcott