posts tagged "gregory orr"

"To guide someone
through the halls of hell
is not the same as love.”
-Gregory Orr, from “When Eurydice Saw Him"

“How can I celebrate love
now that I know what it does?”
-Gregory Orr

"… I held
Back about love
All those years:
Talking about death
Insistently, even
As I was alive;
Talking about loss
As if all was loss,
As if the world
Did not return
Each morning.”
Gregory Orr, from “Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved"

"I will lose you.
It is written into this poem
the way the fisherman’s wife
knits his death into the sweater.”
-Gregory Orr, “The Sweater"

Time to shut up.
Voltaire said the secret
Of being boring
Is to say everything

And yet I held
Back about love
All those years:
Talking about death
Insistently, even
As I was alive;
Talking about loss
As if all was loss,
As if the world
Did not return
Each morning.
As if the beloved
Didn’t long for us.

No wonder I go on
So. I go on so
Because of the wonder.”

-Gregory Orr, from “Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved”

"The world comes into the poem,
The poem comes into the world.
Reciprocity - it all comes down
To that.
       As with lovers:
When it’s right you can’t say
Who is kissing whom.”
-Gregory Orr, from “Concerning The Book That is the Body of the Beloved"

"That T-shirt - it smells
Of him. Don’t wash it.
I need to hold it
Close.
        I want to sleep
With it near my face.

How ridiculous this is:
Grief leading me by the nose.”
-Gregory Orr, from “How Beautiful The Beloved"

On Reading Gregory Orr

                            From such heaviness
                            what could rise? — G. Orr

In the library’s winged-back chair
I have allowed the poems
to fall from my hand
and my eyes to close
and my head to rest
on one winged shoulder.

I have let go his words
that roll away the boulder of years
to show how his child’s hands
held his empty gun and fired,
leaving his brother dead beside the deer.

I have leaned into the rough wool
of sleep to ease such grief,
and startled awake
to the sound of my own weeping.

-Robin Chapman

Weren’t we more than
Electricity and dust?

Weren’t we the hours
We lay beside
Each other?

          Weren’t we
The marks
We made on the page?

Weren’t we the days
We knew we had purpose
And every step
We took was praise?”
-Gregory Orr, from “How Beautiful The Beloved”

"Sometimes only the length
Of a single poem”
-Gregory Orr, from “How Beautiful The Beloved"