In her second collection, Shanna Compton leads readers on a lightly satirical tour through various works of advice for young women, including antique etiquette manuals, pseudoscientific physiology textbooks, 19th-century sermons, contemporary newspaper clippings, and Internet chatter. Counseling girls on everything from fashion to family, the multiple personae in FOR GIRLS & OTHER POEMS clamor to convey their contradictory (and often ridiculous) wisdom as their polyvocal cacophony pitches toward hysterical heights.
