“[A] confident, mystical, expansive project.”—Publishers Weekly“[D]azzling and timeless . . . focus is so unwaveringly aimed toward the transcendent—not God, but the beloved—that we seem to slip into a less cluttered time.”—The Virginia Quarterly Review, “Editor’s Choice”"Mary Oliver calls him '...a Walt Whitman without an inch of Whitman's bunting or oratory.' In these pages, he is more nearly a modern-day Rumi. This is not primarily a poetry of image, bu...

How can I celebrate love/ now that I know what it does? So begins this booklength lyric sequence which reinhabits and modernizes the story of Orpheus, the mythic master of the lyre (and father of lyric poetry) and Eurydice, his lover who died and whom Orpheus tried to rescue from Hades.Gregory Orr uses as his touchstone the assertion that myths attempt to narrate a whole human experience, while at the same time serving a purpose which resists explanation. Through poems of passionat...

A stunning new volume from a poet whose body of work illuminates the ways “language can become a tool for carrying what feels unbearable” (Krista Tippet, On Being).From a master lyric poet characterized by Mary Oliver as “a Walt Whitman without an inch of Whitman’s bunting and oratory” comes this late-life collection that takes its overall title from the venerable phrase that alerted listeners and viewers to an urgent event of public significance. Again an...

A “master of the lyric poem” (Paris Review) at the top of his form writes indelibly of grief and love.In this moving, playful, and deeply philosophical volume, acclaimed poet Gregory Orr returns with a passionate exploration of the forces that shape us. Slipping effortlessly from personal trauma (“Song of What Happens”) to public catastrophe (“Charlottesville Elegy”), Orr seeks innovative ways for the imagination to respond to and create meaning out of pai...

“The heart of Orr’s poetry, now as ever, is the enigmatic image . . . mystical, carnal, reflective, wry.”—San Francisco ReviewThis book-length sequence of ecstatic, visionary lyrics recalls Rumi in its search for the beloved and its passionate belief in the healing qualities of art and beauty.Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved is an incantatory celebration of the “Book,” an imaginary and self-gathering anthology of all the lyrics—both poem...

An innovative and accessible guide to poetry-writing by an award-winning poet and beloved professor of poetry.A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry guides the young poet toward a deeper understanding of how poetry can function in his or her life, while also introducing the art in an exciting new way. Using such poems as Theodore Roethke’s "My Papa’s Waltz" and Robert Hayden’s "Those Winter Sundays," the Primer encourages young writers to approa...

An expansive, lyric testament to the formidable mystery of love, spanning several previous volumes all in dedication to the beloved.For more than a decade, Gregory Orr has been writing toward “the Book:” an imagined tome containing every poem and song ever written. Drawing from a rich tradition of lyric poetry, Selected Books of the Beloved is the culmination of that project, and more—it is a celebration of the transformative power of poetry, and of our ex...

Home of the first settlement in the United States and known as Old Dominion and The Mother of Presidents, the state of Virginia’s artistic output proves among the most fecund in the nation, evidenced in this ninth volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology. This collection includes well-known, established, and celebrated poets such as Charles Wright, Claudia Emerson, Gregory Orr, Ellen Bryant Voigt, R. T. Smith, Forrest Gander, and Rita Dove, and the editors have dedicated equal focu...

Gregory Orr’s genius is the transformation of trauma into art. Whether writing about his responsibility for a brother’s death during a hunting accident, drug addiction, or being jailed during the Civil Rights struggle, lyricism erupts in the midst of desolation and violence. Orr’s spare, succinct poems distill myth from the domestic and display a richness of action and visual detail.This long-awaited collection is soulful work from a remarkable poet, whose poems have been described...

An acclaimed poet's "gripping" memoir of an accidental tragedy, a childhood haunted by guilt, and a quest to find healing through art ( Publishers Weekly).When Gregory Orr was twelve years old, he shot and killed his brother in a hunting accident. From the immediate aftermath—a period of shock, sadness, and isolation—it quickly became clear that support and guidance would not be coming from his distant mother. Nor would it come from his father, a philanderi...

It is a simple principle: repeating a word feeds the mind with that word. So why not carefully choose words you want to feed your mind?Those offered here - in alphabetical order for easy memorization - are not the only ones possible. But this Alphabet offers one approach to applying this principle, together with meditations on each of the words proposed.

“Dan Gerber tenderly reels his readers through the ‘beautiful movie’ he calls the passing of time on earth in a language completely unadorned and Zen-like in its quietude. The thing itself carries the weight of these poems, which recall the deep imagery of Vallejo, Neruda and Wright.”—Rain Taxi Dan Gerber is a master of layered, bittersweet imagery. In his seventh book of poems, he writes of childhood misgivings and fears, the oak savannah landscape of California’s central coast, ...