- How to (Un)cage a Girl
This collection of forty-five poems covers typical Block fare: adolescence, love, sex, and the sometimes tortured, sometimes glorious relationships girls have with their own bodies. An obsession with attractiveness and the lack thereof permeates the collection, and this exploration ties the individual poems, arranged in three sections, into a coherent picture. The author sets all of these elements within a distinctly autobiographical framework, referencing her own coming of age and parenthood regularly throughout the collection. While the topics sometimes verge on melodrama (hearts are broken to the degree that their owners see only death as a release, and the agony of junior high is likened to a concentration camp), Block delivers the themes with a searing passion that occasionally approaches desperation—the words come spilling in solid blocks in several poems, seemingly too hurried to order themselves into a more traditional poetic form. Although this highly personal and reflective collection is unlikely to win any new converts, her devoted fans will appreciate the frequency with which they are referenced, and they will revel in having more of Block’s layers peeled away for examination.