Customer Reviews

Open Letter to Quiet Light

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

When it comes to books we know nothing of, one of my sisters chooses books based on their covers. It's the very thing we're told not to do as readers. However, if you're that sort of book selector, you may find yourself spending several minutes looking over the cover of this book. I know I did. This mythic-like collage that speaks of a wounded heart is a piece that seeks happiness and contentment where it may be found. Its quite beautiful.

Onto the story. This book isn't a usual tale of love. There isn't a man and women who have yet to fall in love because they already have, perhaps a few times. It's the story of an affair, and it's not told in those ordinary chapters, paragraph after paragraph. It's completely told in poetry. The meaning that can go into any sentence can be none if poorly written, small, or quite open to a great amount of meaning. I feel Block's words as her illustrator's artwork are beautiful, painful, and far from shy of feeling. The emotion pours from her poems on the pages and into your skin as you hold the book in your hands while reading.

I consider this quite a special book and think it would be a treat for anyone to read. I've enjoyed it very much. This is the first book I've read by Block and I plan to seek out her other works now.

I am a huge Francesca Lia Block fan and I have been reading her works for years. I loved Open Letter to Quiet Light (as well as her previous book of poems, How to (Un)Cage a Girl). Open Letter is a collection of poems chronicling a love affair. The poems are dripping with emotion, love, and the insecurities that women feel when being vulnerable in relationships. The poems are addressed to her ex-lover whose name means "quiet light". We get an insight to the rush and thrill of their first meeting, the gamut of the affair, and the harrowing downfall that ends in heartache. The entire range of poems will strike a chord with anyone who has ever fallen in love to the point of enrapture only to slowly realize that the idealized verison of the relationship exists only in their imagination. One of my favorite poems is the last one "Open Letter to Quiet Light"-- "I pointed out that quiet light was the meaning of your name. You were very proud of it. You never asked me what my name means. Baby you never asked. But my name? It means Free." I would definitely recommend this book to Francesca Lia Block fans and anyone who has fallen in love only to lose it all but wouldn't change that for the world.

I scanned through the reviews of the book and was dismayed that some people did not appreciate FLB's honesty. At times it can be difficult to know that your favorite authors are human and can be insecure and neurotic.

This book really lays it on the table and gives us the joyous, painful and dirty insight into a relationship she had with a man, who it turns out was selfish and immature. This said, my favorite poems in the collection were: "What You Need to Know" and the last one, "Open Letter to Quiet Light." Both gave me chills.

While FLB is not in her personal life the feminist warrior/traveler that we get from her other books,she does have imagination and chutpah. We cannot take that away from her and frankly, I appreciate that she made herself vulnerable with this collection.

I do think that if you've enjoyed her books, especially Guarding the Moon and her previous book of poetry, you will enjoy this book.

Open Letter to Quiet Light by Francesca Lia Block is a collection of poems thematically telling the story of a relationship from its beginning to its end. Block has several other collections of poetry and stories, many young adult books, and although her stories are now written for an older audience, I found this collection the least satisfying of all of her works. To be honest, I am struggling to determine what it is, why it is, this book didn't resonate for me or excite me as so many of her other books have done.

One, I am currently revising a poetry/prose collection of my own that, like Block's, tells a love story. Is my disdain for this one rooted in envy because she got there first? I don't think so; my story is about a relationship but the details are different enough, as well as the style of poetry itself, to suggest common ground but not commonality.

Two, did I find her vulnerability discomfiting? I frankly found myself alarmed, knowing that her readership remains mostly young adult, to read this forty-four year old woman describing a relationship that sounded so adolescent. He is a skater boy, with the emphasis on the word "boy" even though he is apparently in his early 40s who feeds into all of her insecurities, keeps their relationship a secret at first, but, hey!, the sex is great and does it really matter how he treats her when he is so wounded and needs emotional healing as much as she? Talk about setting young readers up to idealize a relationship instead of seeing it for what it is. That the whole thing unravels in the end is no surprise and the catalytic event that precedes the inevitable is also not a surprise.

I shudder to think that women never outgrow accepting immature behavior from men in hopes of making themselves and the men better. I shudder to think that young girls will think it's okay for a guy to not follow through on his promises, flirt with other women, and even feed their insecurities because of a woman of Block's talent, maturity, and inner beauty permits this sort of thing then surely it must be okay.

Ironically, most of Block's books are a celebration of the feminine, girl power treatises, and this collection makes women seem so weak, so lost, and so unaware--unaware of how beautiful we are, how beautifully we ought to be treated, and how our hearts, compassion, and innate ability to nurture are a blessing that makes everything we touch more beautiful.

Where has Francesca Lia Block gone? She lost herself in a man who didn't deserve her and nowhere in this book does she truly celebrate that goddess self that she usually elevates. I am sad to see my idol so fallen, especially since she has inspired me to explore a story I would have otherwise thought was impossible to write. She has a novel and a non-fiction book out I have not yet read--the non-fiction book is a dating guide. After reading this poetry collection, I'm not sure she is the one from whom I would want to take advice. If only Weetzie Bat had written one--now that's a dating guide I would want to follow!

i love francesca lia block and now own all of her books and am very excited to read the ones coming out later this year. her words inspire.

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.

I LOVE the fiction of FLB, and have been a huge fan for many years. BUT ... this was SO different from her fiction! Neither fiction nor poetry (in my opinion), it is her personal record of a failed neurotic romance. I couldn't finish it -- it just made me angry with FLB, and I wanted to shake her and say, "Come on, Franny! Get some self-respect! You're a divorced mother of two ... change therapists until you WAKE UP!"

Not her usual strong female message at all. In fact she is desperate for male companionship and approval as, thankfully, none of her fictional characters are .

Not something I want to read, nor do I want my teenager to read it either.

Any other author would not have been allowed to publish this.

Gorgeous cover art, though!