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    Open Letter to Quiet Light
    Open Letter to Quiet Light
    Open Letter to Quiet Light
    Ebook149 pages1 hour

    Open Letter to Quiet Light

    By Francesca Lia Block

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    An intensely personal collection of poems, the reader will feel as if she's peering at secret writings that are meant for the eyes of the lover alone but somehow transcend the personal to touch everyone who has ever experienced this kind of consuming, wrenching love. Block's precise focus on everyday details - infused with the power of sex and spirit - paint a transcendent, almost mythic portrait of the way two wounded people, both searching for connection, find each other, collide and eventually separate. The words seem to bleed onto the page and even the most graphic moments have a devotional quality.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherManic D Press, Inc.
    Release dateJun 1, 2009
    ISBN9781933149387
    Open Letter to Quiet Light
    Author

    Francesca Lia Block

    Francesca Lia Block, winner of the prestigious Margaret A. Edwards Award, is the author of many acclaimed and bestselling books, including Weetzie Bat; the book collections Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books and Roses and Bones: Myths, Tales, and Secrets; the illustrated novella House of Dolls; the vampire romance novel Pretty Dead; and the gothic werewolf novel The Frenzy. Her work is published around the world.

    Read more from Francesca Lia Block

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    Reviews for Open Letter to Quiet Light

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    • 3/5
      I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers program in June and only just managed to get around to reading it. I love poetry but I'm very picky about my novels in verse and this one did not live up to my standards. There were some very well-written parts but I felt that most of the novel didn't flow or portray enough for me to get into and enjoy the story told by the poems. A let down.
    • 3/5
      An Early Reviewer book.I've long been a fan of Block's, but like her previous novel for Manic D, Quakeland, this collection of poetry seems unfinished and lacking in discipline. There is some gorgeous imagery here, but there is a tendency to reuse metaphors in a way that feels more like laziness than a conscious effort at evoking the cycles of a relationship. It reads like a decent book of poems that could have been much better with revision, which is disappointing. There were, however, several poems I bookmarked in order to return to them later. Overall, it's a decent book, but not worth the hardcover price unless you are a Block completist.
    • 3/5
      I'm a poetry geek, so I was very excited to receive this book as an early reviewer from LibraryThing. The first thing that drew me in was the gorgeous cover which I can find something new in every time that I look at it. I was really hoping that the poetry inside would offer the same sort of depth.Some did. Poems like "phoenix" and "organic roses" had the sort of depth that I was expecting. Many did not. There were certain images that were reused too much and lost their power by the third reiteration. As a cycle of poetry, it does bring the bare skeleton of the story Block was trying to tell to life. However, it really was left at that, bare bones. The more I read about these two people, the more I wanted to hear poems that fleshed them out more, gave more reasons for her motivations. From the start, it is evident that our narrator is an unreliable one, and only offers up the information that will best suit her case, as we never really find out what it was that caused her love to leave her.Over all, it was an interesting take on a poem cycle that was an easy read to breeze through. It would have resonated with me more if there had been more poems there, again, to give flesh to bones.
    • 4/5
      Francesca Lia Block has been my author crush since I read Weetzie Bat as a preteen and never looked back. Her lyrical style and euphonious phrases sing my body electric. I love her so much, in fact, that I buy extra copies of her books to cut-up so I can incorporate phrases into collages and decoupaged jewelry boxes and nightstands. As a teen librarian, hers are the first book I recommend to girls who come in with that indefinably wistful look in their eyes, romantics with a taste for fairy tales and mythology. Suffice it to say, I was overjoyed to receive a reviewer’s copy of her new book of poems, Open Letter to Quiet Light. Described as “the rise and demise of a year-long love affair”, the book begins with her traditional images of nature personified, mythological creatures like nymphs and satyrs. Some uncharacteristic rhyming detracted from the flow of the text but Block manages to make even the most mundane things glimmer with magic. There is a definite voyeuristic pleasure to be had in reading these poems, so clearly addressed to a specific individual. Her vulnerability is contagious and painful, insinuating itself under your own skin. The book does indeed journey through a relationship, seesawing with ups and downs, ultimately concluding with a poignant note. This is not a good introduction to Block but is a strong addition to any fan’s collection.
    • 5/5
      Gorgeous cover, beautiful story told in poetry form -- super-passionate -- Francesca Lia Block dives deep to harvest complicated emotions in this book. It left me feeling happy, sad, wistful and hopeful all at the same time. Wow!

    Book preview

    Open Letter to Quiet Light - Francesca Lia Block

    pansexual

    the satyr found her bathing in a pool

    deep at the bottom of a grotto

    where she went to lament the broken toxic world

    he slipped into the water without a sound

    and wrapped his furry legs around her hips

    from behind

    he whispered with his lips

    into her ear

    a language she did not understand

    pressed his rock

    hardness up

    against her back

    she was not afraid

    this was what she had been waiting for

    why did it take you so long? she asked him

    he rubbed his little beard against her

    shoulder

    she reached up behind

    twisted black curls in her fingertips

    tilted back her head

    his lips

    ragged with lust found her lips

    in his rough hands her small exhausted breasts

    swelled like honey melons like full moons

    then he lifted her

    out of the water and carried her to the shore

    on his delicate clattering hooves

    knelt and thrust into her with the force of his powerful haunches

    her body that had once been human

    became animals

    a brain buzzing like bees

    butterfly hands

    her heart a beating bird

    the cat that purred

    between her legs

    and then a tiger with a stag

    locked in its jaws

    who are you? she asked him

    and why have you come?

    the satyr said a word she did not know

    but knew meant look

    and out of the earth grew plants with powers

    to make tumors shrink and disappear

    and rain came down

    that smelled of the inner depths

    of lilies

    it washed away the poisons

    and on the banks the children danced

    their mouths upturned to the sky

    and the satyr in his strange language that she now knew said

    the meaning of apocalypse my nymph

    my nymph my elemental

    is only revelation

    first date

    in spite of what we had lost

    our bodies said yes at the first touch

    before our minds felt the fear

    or did they say yes because of what we had lost?

    abandonment takes many forms

    but the need for solace

    made us brave

    we rolled on the floor with the flowers you'd brought

    an unspoken question in your hands

    you untied my white dress

    sucked on my breasts

    you reached up inside and discovered me wet

    you said now i can wait because now i know this will be

    let me fuck away the pain

    suck away the pain

    tuck away the pain

    let me flick away the pain

    lick away the pain

    slick away the pain

    let me tease the pain

    ease the pain

    appease the pain

    in spite of what i have been through and maybe because of it

    let me tell you this

    this

    is the best time of my life right now

    no one can take that away

    this is how

    i will always

    remember it

    mother tongue

    speak to me in portuguese she said on their first date

    it's such a cliché he grumbled

    she asked again two months later and he did it

    the words spilling

    like water over

    her burning

    abdomen

    as he lifted her

    t-shirt slowly up

    his lips speaking words first

    then another silent language

    putting his secrets inside of her

    portuguese she thinks

    lilting throaty throating lilty

    milky silken milken silky

    the language he'd used as a child

    she tries to imagine him with his round-brown eyes

    and curly lashes his lanky body

    it's hard to see him without the goatee sideburns

    but his lips must have been the same

    full and brooding

    the mother

    tongue

    she thinks

    words and emotions

    suddenly one

    a part of him she hadn't seen yet

    full of tender confidence steadfast longing

    if she had a secret language

    one he didn't understand

    she would speak of babies and his beauty

    but she doesn't she can only moan

    and write poetry she doesn't show him

    later she cups her young son's face in her hands

    it feels smaller and softer than she remembered it

    after the bearded large one she'd held no less tenderly

    as he whispered his mystery

    bleed

    i want to bleed and cry on you

    from the ducts from the gash gushing

    all my stress and sorrow

    but every day i restrain myself

    staunch the flow with a tiny white pill

    bleed privately on my walks in yoga therapy

    on the phone to friends

    or profusely on the page

    the keyboard

    forming patterns

    peonies and dragons

    but when you are inside of me i can't help it

    tears and blood spill from my thighs

    i only hope that love transforms pain

    like poetry

    sexualicity

    i thought something was wrong with me

    for wanting to make love all the time and have six babies

    it's only a problem if you don't have someone you adore

    to fuck

    the doctor who delivered my two asked me if i was done

    i made a sound that meant i should be but i'm not

    he said your ovaries are perfect

    and that women my age come to him all the time trying to get pregnant

    i told him to shut up

    i wanted to call you on the way home and ask you to come over after work

    even though we've both decided

    sublimation is the way to go

    i've had this fantasy since i was a little girl

    of an old white house with green trim lots of windows and a terraced garden

    i am wearing tight faded jeans a white cotton shirt and high-heeled boots

    there is a man working in the other room

    sitting at a

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