Tag Archives: Gregory Orr

Sing Me Awake: Listening and The Mysterious Hidden Woman

  This is what was bequeathed us: This earth the beloved left And, leaving, Left to us. No Other world But this one: Willows and the river And the factory With its black smokestacks. No other shore, only this bank On which the living gather. No meaning but what we find here. No purpose but […]

“The Book” and the Art of Poetic Provenance

The Beloved is Dead The beloved is dead. Limbs And all the body’s Miraculous parts Scattered across Egypt, Stained with dark mud. We must find them, gather Them together, bring them Into a single place As an anthologist might collect All the poems that matter Into a single book, a book Which is the body […]

An Alphabet of Poets – O is for Orr

* When Sappho wrote: “whatever one loves most is beautiful,” she began The  poems of heart’s praise That comprise the Book Of the body of the beloved Which is the world. Everything in the Book flows from that single poem Or the countless others That say the same thing In other words, other ways. * […]