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Desert Quartet: An Erotic Landscape
Beautifully illuminated with drawings and paintings by noted artist Mary Frank, Williams, one of the West's most intense and lyrical writers, invokes the lure and drama of the landscape. This is an incandescent meditation--in word and image--on the physical vastness and beauty of the desert and the spiritual place one woman finds for herself there.
62 pages, Hardcover
First published September 26, 1995
2 people are currently reading
324 people want to read
About the author
Terry Tempest Williams
99 books1,465 followersTerry Tempest Williams is an American author, conservationist and activist. Williams’ writing is rooted in the American West and has been significantly influenced by the arid landscape of her native Utah in which she was raised. Her work ranges from issues of ecology and wilderness preservation, to women's health, to exploring our relationship to culture and nature.
She has testified before Congress on women’s health, committed acts of civil disobedience in the years 1987 - 1992 in protest against nuclear testing in the Nevada Desert, and again, in March, 2003 in Washington, D.C., with Code Pink, against the Iraq War. She has been a guest at the White House, has camped in the remote regions of the Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda.
Williams is the author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; and The Open Space of Democracy. Her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World was published in 2008 by Pantheon Books.
In 2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, their highest honor given to an American citizen. She also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association and the Wallace Stegner Award given by The Center for the American West. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfictionand a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction. Williams was featured in Ken Burns' PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009). In 2011, she received the 18th International Peace Award given by the Community of Christ Church.
Williams is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah and a columnist for the magazine The Progressive. She has been a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College where she continues to teach. She divides her time between Wilson, Wyoming and Castle Valley, Utah, where her husband Brooke is field coordinator for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
She has testified before Congress on women’s health, committed acts of civil disobedience in the years 1987 - 1992 in protest against nuclear testing in the Nevada Desert, and again, in March, 2003 in Washington, D.C., with Code Pink, against the Iraq War. She has been a guest at the White House, has camped in the remote regions of the Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda.
Williams is the author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; and The Open Space of Democracy. Her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World was published in 2008 by Pantheon Books.
In 2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, their highest honor given to an American citizen. She also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association and the Wallace Stegner Award given by The Center for the American West. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfictionand a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction. Williams was featured in Ken Burns' PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009). In 2011, she received the 18th International Peace Award given by the Community of Christ Church.
Williams is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah and a columnist for the magazine The Progressive. She has been a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College where she continues to teach. She divides her time between Wilson, Wyoming and Castle Valley, Utah, where her husband Brooke is field coordinator for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 16, 2011
In reading reviews, I thought this book might be longer than it is. Its genre might be prose poetry or poetic creative non-fiction. This book might be a nature lovers fantasy. I love nature but this book just didn't hit me as all that wonderful. I loved Williams writing and insight in Refuge but I'm just not as edgy as she is when it comes to nature. I won't ever be caught wearing a dead frog around my neck! lol
June 11, 2012
This book is completely sensual. The visions she elicits are almost tangible. It's good read for nature lovers, and a perfect read for those drawn to the desert.
September 3, 2018
loved (5) | liked (4) | undecided (3) | disliked (2) | hated (1)
How to love and make love to the desert. A personal exploration of passion and how you can feel closer to the Earth than your fellow humans.
How to love and make love to the desert. A personal exploration of passion and how you can feel closer to the Earth than your fellow humans.
February 14, 2024
A goodreads friend gave me this.
I read it on the loneliest Valentine's day of my life.
My one comment...which is hateful...why do boys think it's ok to kill frogs?
That childhood story killed any positivity I could have had reading this "erotic landscape".
I read it on the loneliest Valentine's day of my life.
My one comment...which is hateful...why do boys think it's ok to kill frogs?
That childhood story killed any positivity I could have had reading this "erotic landscape".
September 11, 2017
On a hike to Druid Arch, The arousal of my breath rises in me like music, like love, as the possessive muscles between my legs tighten and release.
I’ll have what she’s having.
I’ll have what she’s having.
January 13, 2022
TTW writes beautifully
July 17, 2024
Interesting little vignettes, some more appealing to me than others. Quick read.
November 30, 2024
A little jewel. A potshard from the canyon.
September 11, 2013
Williams allows the reader to play the role of voyeur by offering us her quartet of erotic poems. Her lover is nature itself, whom she parses into the elements earth, water, fire and air. Her poems, of course, are quite sensual, descriptive, and crammed full of luscious images. Nevertheless, Mary Frank provides artwork as suggestions for visualizing the persona of the poem.
Through word and image, readers can observe the poem's persona walk on hot sandstone, caress canyon walls, adorn herself with a frog carcass, swim in a desert lake, commune with the crackling flames shooting from a juniper branch, and take inspiration from the expiration of various creatures sharing the dry desert atmosphere.
But the poems are not merely sensual. They are philosophical too, asking questions about the relationship among living things and the vacillating nature of passion. These are good questions, but ones best addressed by putting the book down and wandering into the closest wilderness available, even if it's the wildness inherent in the body of the reader's beloved.
I used to live in Utah, and I have traveled to areas similar to the landscape she describes. I am a bookish sort, an indoor enthusiast. But reading TTW's quartet of poems unveiled a desire to find splendor in the grass--or in the rocks, water, fire and air--of the nearest available expanse of nature.
Through word and image, readers can observe the poem's persona walk on hot sandstone, caress canyon walls, adorn herself with a frog carcass, swim in a desert lake, commune with the crackling flames shooting from a juniper branch, and take inspiration from the expiration of various creatures sharing the dry desert atmosphere.
But the poems are not merely sensual. They are philosophical too, asking questions about the relationship among living things and the vacillating nature of passion. These are good questions, but ones best addressed by putting the book down and wandering into the closest wilderness available, even if it's the wildness inherent in the body of the reader's beloved.
I used to live in Utah, and I have traveled to areas similar to the landscape she describes. I am a bookish sort, an indoor enthusiast. But reading TTW's quartet of poems unveiled a desire to find splendor in the grass--or in the rocks, water, fire and air--of the nearest available expanse of nature.
April 7, 2009
This is a small book, perhaps intended to be a gift to a lover. Williams is the naturalist-in-residence at the Utah Museum of Natural History, and clearly loves and knows the landscape of the Colorado Plateau. The prose is lyrical and descriptive, and maybe a little too much like a private journal for my taste. I did enjoy the paintings and drawings by Mark Frank that accompany the text.
June 12, 2020
Through the weathering of our spirit, the erosion of our soul, we are vulnerable. Isn't that what passion is -bodies broken open through change? We are acted upon. We invite and accept the life of another to take root inside. The succession of the canyons is like our own.
July 18, 2007
Gorgeous.
August 2, 2008
Poetic proses that asks (and answers) the question, "What would it be like to make love to the land?" TTW's beautiful imagery is accompanied by the provocative artwork of Mary Frank. Great stuff.
April 5, 2009
Poetic... love of the land, the desert. Very short and delightful.
July 12, 2009
Unusual and strangely erotic collection about loving the desert.
September 28, 2009
Lovely book!
December 6, 2009
also beautifully written--one of my favorite writers--a hybrid genre of both non-fiction/ essay/ poetry
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July 10, 2019Beautiful drawings!
August 1, 2012
Lyrical, beautiful, poetic, erotic. The images evoked are extraordinary.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews