Take a 1940s doctor’s manual of sexual instruction for the layman; apply a lens of adult daughter, examining the sex life of her parents; season with the pathos and hilarity of gender clashes between the sheets–and you have Susana Case’s Manual of Practical Sexual Advice.

“To the delicate genital corpuscles / like taste buds in the mouth / like nerve endings in the retina / ticket takers of sensations. To the bulbo-cavernous muscles / their spasmodic pulsations.

What did my mother think the first time it happened? What / did my mother think the first time it didn’t happen?”

–Susana H. Case, from “Ode to Orgasms”