 In these poems, she considers the relationship between reason and emotion, and the connection of the body to the mind, often siding with feeling and imagination while stilling insisting that action ultimately rules over the page.Even within her focus on the personal, like in the earlier collections, in "Appearances", Oden investigates a wider range of topics from family, love, aging, happiness, and sexual passion.As the title would suggest, there is also a newfound openness in these verses, a shedding of past experiences.