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The Beloved is Indeed Beautiful and Inspiring
In How Beautiful The Beloved, Orr signifies Whitman's optimism and scope to explore the many facets of "the beloved."Poet Mary Oliver states, "Greg Orr is a Walt Whitman without an inch of Whitman's bunting or oratory." Indeed, it is difficult not to think of Whitman's hopefulness and commitment to living life to its fullest as Orr masterfully orchestrates this volume of exquisite verse.

Orr begins his unified collection with utter sanguinity, "If to say once/And once only, then still/To say: Yes." Much like Whitman, Orr's speaker is ready to embrace "the beloved" physically, emotionally, and spiritually.From the start, the speaker is unwilling to limit the reach of the beloved.The beloved transcends gender: "The Book said the beloved died,/But also that she comes again,/That he's reborn as words."As the speaker continues, he illuminates the many relationships of mankind to the beloved.The speaker muses, "How we embrace the beloved/So tightly that fate itself/Was changed into destiny."

Orr's collection is broken into four parts, each part tackling another aspect of the beloved.Part one focuses on the origins of the beloved. The speaker wrestles with questions such as, "How does the beloved enter the world?"Or better yet, "How does the beloved enter our world, our own personal lives?"Part two discusses the setbacks of embracing the beloved and the detrimental effects of losing the beloved.The speaker states, "We let the beloved go/Without a song or poem,/And that diminished us."In part three, the speaker begins to recognize that the beloved never really left; the beloved has simply taken on another form, another poem.The speaker states, "Who says there's nothing written/On the Book's blank pages?/Some have simply faded/And need to be written again."In part four, the speaker celebrates the gift of the beloved and the exciting possibilities of the relationship that can exist between mankind and the beloved, the relationship between mankind and poetry.

How Beautiful The Beloved is indeed beautiful and will be loved by those who fall under its enchanting spell.

Focusing on happiness and the many paths towards it
Seasoned and prolific poet Gregory Orr returns to readers with yet another volume, "How Beautiful the Beloved", focusing on happiness and the many paths towards it. Each poem details his own take on many of the possible routes. "How Beautiful the Beloved" is upbeat and uplifting, highly recommended. A sample: What death shatters/(sliver in the dirt, /shard in the heart),//Song will find/No matter/How scattered./Poem will gather/into its pattern.
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Critically acclaimed poet Gregory Orr’s memoir of his tragic boyhood and ultimate redemption

Filled with the spare and moving language that marks Gregory Orr’s most affecting poems, The Blessing explores themes of personal tragedy and atonement, trauma and reconciliation. Orr’s ability to give voice to the feelings that are hardest to put into words makes his story unforgettable, mesmerizing reading.

The blood that would first stain Orr’s childhood was spilled the year he was twelve. In that autumn, Gregory Orr shot his brother to death in a hunting accident. In this spare and poignant memoir, he tells how this horrific event shaped his life. Against backdrops of the rural Hudson Valley, a remote charity hospital in the jungles of Haiti, and the Deep South of the civil rights era where he marched and bled with other youthful demonstrators, Orr articulates his journey in a language as sharp-edged and authentic as the experiences themselves.

At his brother’s funeral, he saw ". . . that death was with us. It was the small white snail of wadded Kleenex my mother kept pressing against her face; it was nibbling holes in her cheek as if it were a leaf." No comfort would come from Orr’s beloved though distant mother or his father, a quixotic country doctor addicted to amphetamines. He would have to make sense of life’s inchoate forces on his own. Eventually, his experiences would lead him to an unexpected epiphany and a clear answer to one of life’s basic questions: How do we find meaning in the face of death? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Gratitude
I am so grateful to Grgory Orr for this memoir, for his poetry, and his book, Poetry as Survival. His writing reinforces my own belief that poetry can be a container for the most painful moments in life. Thank you.
Tansy Chapman

Mistitled, but great read
Gregory Orr's The Blessing is a moving and powerfully written memoir about his experiences specifically around death and shame and how his 1960s family dealt with tragedy. The title is misleading. Poetry is the blessing, but it isn't introduced until near the end and survival through poetry really isn't what this book is about in this reader's opinion.

As a young boy, Orr accidentally shot and killed his younger brother and struggled with guilt through his remaining teen years. His father, a narcissistic and amphetamine-addicted small-town doctor, doesn't help matters by his own selfish adventures and escapes. And his mother, though aloof and distant, is his only hope for parental attachment. But she, too, dies tragically before Orr reaches adulthood. Then, in yet another ironic and tragic turn of events, Orr finds himself barely escaping death as he participates in civil rights activism in the Deep South. Most effective is Orr's use of language to capture internal and emotional conflict.

Pulled me down..
This book started out very strong--we emotion and written word. But going toward the mid point of part 4 it started to unravel. I really thought by the way the book started I would continue to be moved..but I was very disappointed by the book. I found myself forcing my way through so I could finish it; it was hard to finish it because it just wasn't nearly as good. I will try to read some of the author's poetry and maybe that will bring back to a good place about the author--but I just don't know.:(

Peace through poetry
This book is shocking in its stark retelling of an emotionally brutal childhood. I was drawn in instantly. I found myself holding my breath and staring into the room at the conclusion of a page. I was stunned. The moments of the story have lingered with me. My mind poured over the events. Later even after I had moved on to other thoughts, the emotions lingered under my thoughts, so that I would often pause in the middle of doing tasks. The writer seems to be seeking peace through resurrection and forgiveness.

Peace After
This book is shocking in its stark retelling of an emotionally brutal childhood.I was drawn in instantly.I found myself holding my breath and staring into the room at the conclusion of a page.I was stunned.The moments of the story have lingered with me.My mind poured over the events.Later even after I had moved on to other thoughts, the emotions lingered under my thoughts, so that I would often pause in the middle of doing tasks.The writer seems to be seeking peace through resurrection and forgiveness. ... Read more

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Intended for general readers and for students and scholars of poetry, Poetry as Survival is a complex and lucid analysis of the powerful role poetry can play in confronting, surviving, and transcending pain and suffering. Gregory Orr draws from a generous array of sources. He weaves discussions of work by Keats, Dickinson, and Whitman with quotes from three-thousand-year-old Egyptian poems, Inuit songs, and Japanese love poems to show that writing personal lyric has helped poets throughout history to process emotional and experiential turmoil, from individual stress to collective grief. More specifically, he considers how the acts of writing, reading, and listening to lyric bring ordering powers to the chaos that surrounds us. Moving into more contemporary work, Orr looks at the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Stanley Kunitz, and Theodore Roethke, poets who relied on their own work to get through painful psychological experiences. As a poet who has experienced considerable trauma--especially as a child--Orr refers to the damaging experiences of his past and to the role poetry played in his ability to recover and survive. His personal narrative makes all the more poignant and vivid Orr's claims for lyric poetry's power as a tool for healing. Poetry as Survival is a memorable and inspiring introduction to lyric poetry's capacity to help us find safety and comfort in a threatening world. ... Read more

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Worth Its Weight in Gold
This book is worth its weight in gold.It is worth more than all the self-help-how-to-write-poetry books put together.

Orr writes of the poetry of survival with complete authority.He knows what he's talking about, having suffered a psychic wound early in childhood when he accidentally killed his little brother in a hunting accident.Orr writes:"To say that I was horrified and traumatized by the event is only to state the obvious."The point, says Orr, is that his writing got him beyond the horror and the paralysis.

What sets this book apart from the "how-to's" and the "can-do's" is Orr's emphasis on excellence: In other words, it isn't enough to have a psychic wound and to write about it--great writing comes about only through a careful and (usually) long apprenticeship.

The first half of the book explains the psychology of writing and healing.Orr's writing is thoughtful and engaging.He has the ability to explain complex concepts in a way that is easy for the reader to understand.For instance, in explaining the "self," Orr writes:"The self, in my image, is like a tiny island in a vast sea of chaos, and it's also like those conch shells you lift to your ear to hear the ocean's roar:the chaos of the sea is inside the self also."Throughout, Orr seeks to explain how writing can give order to the seemingly chaotic life.

The second half of the book deals with writers of the personal lyric, focusing on early practitioners like Blake, Wordsworth, and Whitman.In addition, in his thoroughly engaging way, Orr writes of several poets as being his "heroes."In doing so, amazingly, he humanizes them, makes them real people rather than the marble statues they seem to be in poetry anthologies.Other poets he discusses are:Plath, Roethke, Dickinson, Keats, and Wilfred Owen.

One of my favorite revelations in the book was Orr's brief discussion of the Polish poet Tadeusz Rozewicz, whose "In the Middle of Life" portrays, in Orr's words, "a shell-shocked, traumatized veteran who must relearn everything from scratch and through elementary incantatory repetitions."

As a university lecturer, and as someone who is familiar with literary criticism, I find that often in classrooms the writer's original and personal motivations for writing are erased from consideration.Works are often come to as though they are cadavers, opened and probed objectively on a slab.Orr, in contrast, brings poets and their poems fully alive.The experience of reading this book was thoroughly rewarding.

I highly recommend this book.It is a great companion to DeSalvo's WRITING AS A WAY OF HEALING:HOW TELLING OUR STORIES TRANSFORMS OUR LIVES. ... Read more

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Immortal, but uneven words
This poet makes a passionate and convincing case that words, "the Book", is the way we and those we love are in fact immortal. "It's words that bring the beloved back," he tells us.

I commend Gregory Orr for writing - most of the time -in a simple, plain spoken, lovely language; and for writing a book that will comfort and inspire many who grieve over the death of a loved one. He feels his way along as though he were in the midst of heartbreak right in front of us, yet also speaks frequently in the second person "you", as though we were with him, sharing his experience, or he sharing ours. This makes for good company.

I would gently criticize Gregory Orr for some unnecessary complications, and for some lapses into banality and cliche. The title of the book, and the concept of the word-body-world-beloved, seem tortured to me.I think this cumbersome construction is avoidable and off-putting. It adds a component of pretentiousness to a naked, humble collection of poems.

As to the banality and cliches... we are each our own judge of those instances when a writer says something too obvious, and in an obvious way. Sometimes doing so is nevertheless fresh, and in a lot of cases, Orr's simple phrases ARE fresh (and spectacular). But sometimes, his lines seem to me shopworn and lazy, e.g: "Why should the grave be final? / Why should death be everything?/ Isn't the world wonderful?/ Don't we want more of it?/ And in poems, life goes on/forever."

I rated this book a 3, but truly this is just an average between a five and a 1. There is nothing average about this book, or "3-ish". It is a combination of the sublime and moving (5 star), with the banal and obvious. (1 star)

Poetry For Survival
I don't remember now how I first encountered this book of poems. I bought a copy, read it straight through, and was so moved that I bought several more copies and gave them out to my closest friends last Christmas, 2007. I preach and teach at church and I read several of the poems to our congregation. While not a religious book, Orr's themes are the universal ones that touch all of us: life, death, loss, love and, of course the role poetry plays (like faith) in comprehending them all. I suppose, because of my own experiences of significant loss early in life (my best friend, my sister...), Orr's history resonated with me. I had no idea. A few short months after I fell in love with this book, in February 2008, my own precious 18 year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. Orr's book was still sitting on my nightstand, and, while I have read many helpful books about loss and grief, nothing has spoken to me like Concerning The Book That Is The Body Of The Beloved. I have turned to it again and again, and everytime I read it I find new insight, solace, a source of strength. As I have grieved, I have marveled at the total authenticity of Orr's writing. Here is someone who has passed through the fire, survived, and describes the experience, now,as a "blessing." The pain and loss has been transfigured and Orr has returned to bless others with the wisdom and compassion he has gained. It is a message of hope to those who are blind and lost because of their grief. Yesterday morning I read several poems in tears out loud to my wife from the Book that perfectly captured our experience...and offered a small glimmer of hope.
I simply can't recommend this Book enough. I have re-read this book more than any book in my considerable library. It a dear friend, a roadmap, a lantern. If the house was on fire, this book would be one of the precious things I would gather and take with me. It is that good. You don't have to be an intellectual or a poet to understand or appreciate it. Only human. The language is simple and direct and unpretentious. I am amazed at Orr's ability to address our deepest experiences without getting lost in the language. If you like Rumi or Rilke, you will find a familiar voice here. I am a poet myself. I am not sure I have come to the place where I believe that poetry resurrects the beloved. I wish it could. But poetry, at least the poetry Mr. Orr has written, has been a life saver. It has helped me to survive.

the very best poetry...and more
I most appreciate poetry that is accompaniment, poetry that leaves me knowing that I'm in intimately shared territory.We're not often encouraged to think of poetry that way.Poets, teachers and students of poetry are apt to think about poems (and collections of poems) in terms of poetic prowess, academic discipline or literary analysis. There's nothing wrong with doing that, but skill and intellectual examinations and appreciations by themselves won't keep me returning to a book almost daily, over a period of years. I want something more. This book continues to bring me the pleasures and consolations of accompaniment, the rigors of provocation, and inspiration to re-think/re-envision the capacities of The Poem/The Word/The World, and our capacities to experience them. I FEEL these poems--as a pulse, as a heartbeat.They are like filaments that bridge the gaps between body and psyche and soul.

Among many other things, CONCERNING THE BOOK THAT IS THE BODY OF THE BELOVED is a daring spiritual undertaking, a meditation, an expression of gratitude, an examination of life process and poetic process and the relationships between the two.The language of these poems is deceptively simple, their premises infinitely complex. My copy of this book opens familiarly to two pages, so I seem to start each day with one or the other:

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.

and from the other: ...
Was there anything
More wonderful?

How long did it last?
Maybe only a moment;
Maybe it was a dream.
We were afraid
To feel such joy.

(stanza break)


Still, it changed us,
And for once we knew
We belonged in the world.

If I had to leave my house in a hurry, had time to grab only one book, this would be it.

Wisdom Literature
Orr's new collection is a timeless long poem that reads like wisdom literature and Eastern poetry, and will endure, as they have. This is one of the greatest (in the true sense of the word) poems of this decade, perhaps of the first half of this century. It speaks universally, as truly great poetry must; my father, at whom I've thrown countless poems with little reaction on his part, immediately ordered his own copy of this book after reading mine -- the first book of poetry he has ever owned.

A Poetry For All
Concerning is a book that speaks to the mind and to the heart. It has a doublefold language that both the mind and heart can understand. And in reading, I can hear my heart and mind connect. So odd, because they speak in different languages with only a few shared words and phrases. And I think my mind/brain attaches to Concerning through the written "language" on the page. The brain follows the words, syntax, presentation, logic of each of the poems. But the book is too large for the mind to hold it all. The mind starts swirling in all the subtleties of emotion and contraries within the emotions. The mind gets lost after awhile, but accepts.

The heart, however, embraces. It understands. It knows. It doesn't get lost. It knows from from the tone. It understands why each poem weeps and smiles at the same time, or is that the soul?

The book is full and full for the person reading it. The book explains poetry, why poetry, and what is poetry. How poetry is an inherent necessity/urge, how it is natural. How each poem tells the same story -- because each person feels grief, love, joy, and anguish -- but each person is unique with their greif, love, joy, and anguish, and so each poem is unique. But this book somehow embraces all the shared emotions we have and talks to all of us and we back to it naturally.

The only failing of this book is that not everyone will read it. If they did, I believe everyone would appreciate it and poetry, read more poetry, and know what poetry/life/death/living/lovingare and are about.

I think this is the most important book of original poems written in the 2000s, and if not, it is for me.
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The Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers has emerged as one of the most well-respected writing programs in the country, producing a generation of first-rate poets who are also deeply dedicated teachers of their art. Poets Teaching Poets collects essays by current and former lecturers at Warren Wilson, including acclaimed poets Joan Aleshire, Marianne Boruch, Carl Dennis, Stephen Dobyns, Reginald Gibbons, Louise Glück, Allen Grossman, Robert Haas, Tony Hoagland, Heather McHugh, Gregory Orr, Michael Ryan, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Alan Williamson, Eleanor Wilner, and Renate Wood.
This passionate and provocative anthology presents an extended, insightful dialogue on an astonishing range of topics: writers from Homer, Dickinson, and Akhmatova to Bishop, O'Hara, Milosz, and Plath; meditations on the nature of the image and the discovery of the self in Greek verse; a passionate defense of lyric poetry; and other engaging themes. Whatever their subject, these essays are, at the core, passionate and thoughtful meditations on the place of poetry in contemporary culture.
Poets Teaching Poets will be an invaluable tool for teachers and students of poetry and poetics at every level. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the connections between craft and the larger issues of art, and in the continuing and exciting relevance of poetry today.
Gregory Orr is author of six books of poetry, most recently City of Salt, and of two books of criticism, Richer Entanglements: Essays and Notes on Poetry and Poems and Stanley Kunitz: An Introduction to the Poetry. He is Professor of English, University of Virginia.
Ellen Bryant Voigt is founder and former director of the low-residency MFA Writing Program at Goddard College and teaches in its relocated incarnation at Warren Wilson College. She has published four volumes of poetry and has received numerous awards, including two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Gregory Orr's genius is the transformation of trauma into art. Whether writing about his responsibility for a brother's death 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 is soulful work from a remarkable poet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Devestating and Beautiful
Orr's collection here covers his entire body of work, from the brilliant Burning the Empty Nests to more recent, unpublished work, in an edition that is top notch in every way.Check out Orr's nonfiction writing as well: both The Blessing and Poetry as Survival are must-reads for those interested in the artistic process and the significant meaning that poetry can have in our daily lives.Stunning.

smoke and mirrors
there are so many better poets out there-- Sharon Olds for example ... Read more

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A prominent younger poet's intensely personal reflections on his craft and his fellow writers.
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magical
Gregory Orr is an incredible writer capable of making impossible imagesseem like they are your own memory.He is too little known for such a talent.Easily my favorite book of poetry. ... Read more

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This volume of poems is largely autobiographical and presents moments of intense emtion which are anchored in clearly dramatised events. The poems are of elegy and celebration and of occasions where the two modes fuse in acts of redemptive imagination. ... Read more

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City of Salt: A Work of Simplistic Art
Gregory Orr uses a style that is very straight-forward. The poems have a very serious tone. Most of the poems are not very funny.There is usually a point to each poem that is conveyed strongly throughout the poem. A Litany is one poem that has a message that is echoed throughout the poem. The speaker, who is a boy, in the poem shoots his brother. There are a lot of solemn and sad things that go along in the poem that echo the fact the speaker shot his brother. The speaker runs off into his room and the reader does not even know what the speaker did. It is all suspenseful and then about halfway into the poem, the speaker says that he just shot his brother. This is an excellent form of using poems for suspense as the reader is left wondering what happened.
In My Father's Voice, Orr is to the point and leaves really nothing to the imagination in what he did not put in. In the poem, the father screamed at his daughter. It is shown well as the daughter braces herself for the screaming from the father. The daughter's face goes blank and the imagery of the father screaming at the girl is conveyed well. There is no extra lines that are not needed in this poem. It is a nine line poem that gets its point across very quickly and stays on task.
Three Small Songs is another poem that conveys Orr's straight-forward style and his clearly stated points. The first two stanzas are about life and how humans do not live long. It is shown in eight lines very beautifully with the last two lines ending,
we're here
and then we're gone.

The next stanza is about when a mother cries so will the child. It is a very short five lines that tells the reader about a child trying not to cry when the mother is crying. The next stanza is about the speaker as a child lying on the ground at dusk. The stanza shows a child's youthfulness by showing a child just lying on the ground at dusk. A very quick and to the point five lines, Orr's stanzas all mesh together.
Orr's style works very well. He does not dance around the point and has a very serious tone to his poems. His poems are also very calculating with each line seemingly placed in with great precision. City of Salt is a great read. Nothing is left to question after reading his work. His poems give the answers to every question that could arise in his work.

Greg Orr's masterpiece
Gregory Orr opens his book of poems with the five lined poem, "Origin of the Marble forest" which is a masterfully created poem about childhood. This first poem captures a moment of childhood nostalgia with piercing precision, and accomplishes this in only five lines. The first poem is only the tip of the ice berg when it comes to Orr's unique style of poetry. The book has a somewhat grim feeling to it and can be chewy at times, but underneath all of the poems there is hope and closure. Orr touches a lot on his mother and brother's death, but even though this subject is touched on multiple times, Orr is able to keep all the poems new and fresh to the reader. This is where Orr really shines, it his ability to touch on subjects of the same attitude, yet he is able to introduce new ideas and perspectives with each poem. One of the best crafted poems in the book is "I found a Bird", in this piece Orr touches on his questioning of self worth in alternating point of views between him and his daughter, the poem is broken into short excerpts, the most moving of which are the lines where he uses his daughter as an inspiration. The poem reads, "I found a bird. / It is night./ I am small./ I am happy now./ the lamp is lit." the serenity and beauty that Orr is able to capture and a few lines of poetry seems to be one of his greatest talents, he showcases this further in "three small songs" and "elegy" in which the poems are broken up into short excerpts that have the power and serenity of a silent freight train. I would highly recommend reading Gregory Orr's "The City of Salt" he uses a dark tone in most of his work, yet has a bright undertone that keeps all the poems fresh to the reader and keeps the reader moving from one poem to the next. The only drawback to the book would be Orr tendency to go back to his brothers death, in which Orr accidentally killed his brother in a hunting accident, this may bother some readers if they are looking for something new and exciting in each poem, I myself was more than happy to venture further into Orr's struggle with the death of his brother, and the fact the Orr kept each experience fresh helped greatly. ... Read more

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Incantations
Gregory Orr is unreal.Every poem in this collection, whether concerning the poet's complicated youth, or merely describing a lake, takes off in a frenzy of pyrotechnical magic that is both comprehensible and awe inspiring.

I do not think there is a single poet out there today who has Orr's talent and who is also so eager to give interviews, expound on poetry without pretentiousness, and give otherwise lost young poets a roadmap to go by.And if you've ever read anything about him, you'll know how far he's come and how much he's worked through.This and his latest in "Rattle" are highly recommended. ... Read more

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How'd I Miss This?A Confession
I never read much of Orr before this book.I knew he was on the horizon, but I was caught up with dozens of what I thought were more established, more experimental, or (blush) more hip writers.Just recently I was in the bookstore and picked this up without even reading a single poem.When I opened it up that afternoon, I was floored.It might be the best book of poems I've read in several years.The poems use the figures of Orpheus and Eurydice, but the words are about passion, love, and loss.By using the classical figures, Orr opens up the possibility to explore emotions that literary poets sometimes bypass.If you haven't read Orr, this is a knock out.If you're a poetry reader and just want to read a great book, start right here.

Descending into the darkness of love & loss
This slim poetry sequence is one of deceptive simplicity, and gains in subtle but intense power as it progresses. A retelling of the tragic tale of Orpheus & Eurydice, it examines love & desire & grief with perception & precision. It's the precision of both a scalpel & a delicate etching tool, revealing the depths & complexity of the human heart with a single image, a single detail. Everything is scraped down to the bare polished bone, and made achingly beautiful with the adornment of a flower, a glimpse of sunlight, the endless mirror of still water.

Even if you're familiar with previous retellings of this tale, you'll still find something new & revelatory in these pages -- most highly recommended!

A student's praise
Orr is currently my poetry instructor, and he read a few of these poems in my Classical Literature classes here at UVA. I might add that his hushed, musical way of reading the poems makes these lyrics even more transcendent than they already are. I have to say that this book is one of the most honed, compelling and moving collection of lyrics written on the violent, transforming nature of romantic love I have ever read. Yes, the Orpheus myth has been attempted by many of our major poets, but Orr approaches the story with such a clear-eyed and fresh approach, telling us in his quiet, rhythmic meditations the sharpness of heartbreak, the fragility of earthly love, the madness of O's lonely wandering. The Orpheus and Eurydice story becomes a metaphor for intense, unhinged love that transforms lovers into gods and goddesses, the kind of love that sends the madman-lover careening through both heaven and hell. Orr is a master of the lyric, and after reading this book I could not believe I was so lucky to be his student.

Average Poetry
I was very disapointed in this book. However, that disapointment is not necessarily the author's fault, but my own. I wanted to learn something new about Orpheus & Eurydice. Instead, I got a short, padded, overpriced book of average poetry, with no background information or any sort of explanation of the subject. Those who are looking for romantic poetry may get something out of this, but my copy went directly to the recycle box.

Doing Justice to the Myth
What I want with each retelling, whether it be a nursery rhyme or one of my grandfather's war stories, is something fresh and different. I love, of course, rereading my favorite books and poems, but with a tale like that of Orpheus and Eurydice, I'm simply not looking for the same story. I want a new perspective, not only a retelling, but a reshaping of the myth. Orr puts his own spirit into what many of you may know of as the tragic lives of the two lovers. He writes, however, from a place unlike most before him. With the same joy as seeing a film remade with exceptional talent, I read Orr's work with excitement and pleasure. It's not the same story. It's much more. ... Read more

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This digital document, covering the life and work of Gregory Orr, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1590 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author