Gregory Orr
Gregory Orr Poems
A black biplane crashes through the window
of the luncheonette. The pilot climbs down,
removing his leather hood.
He hands me my grandmother's jade ring.
...
This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.
...
A house just like his mother's,
But made of words.
Everything he could remember
...
Here's a seed. Food
for a week. Cow skull
in the pasture; back room
where the brain was:
...
for Peter Orr
When all the rooms of the house
fill with smoke, it's not enough
...
Snapping turtles in the pond eat bass, sunfish,
and frogs. They do us no harm when we swim.
But early this spring two Canada geese
lingered, then built a nest. What I'd
...
I felt both pleasure and a shiver
as we undressed on the slippery bank
and then plunged into the wild river.
...
I stood inside myself
like a dead tree or a tower.
I pulled the rope
of braided hair
...
Hunkered down, nerve-numb,
in the carnal hut,
the cave of self,
while outside a storm
rages.
...
The world seems so palpable
And dense: people and things
And the landscapes
They inhabit or move through.
...
I know now the beloved
Has no fixed abode,
That each body
She inhabits
...
Yesterday, against admonishment,
my daughter balanced on the couch back,
fell and cut her mouth.
...
Thin river woman with a concrete star
wedged in her ear. I wrap
...
The way the word sinks into the deep snow of the page.
The deer lying dead in the clearing,
...
A black biplane crashes through the window
of the luncheonette. The pilot climbs down
...
There are dawns when the window is white with moths,
or black with the ink they spin out of their bodies.
...
When all the rooms of the house
fill with smoke, it's not enough
to say an angel is sleeping on the chimney.
...
Gregory Orr Biography
The author of more than 10 collections of poetry and several volumes of essays, criticism, and memoir, Gregory Orr is a master of the short, personal lyric. His poetry has been widely anthologized and translated into at least 10 languages. Observes critic Hank Lazer, “From Burning the Empty Nests (1973) to the present, Orr gradually developed the ability to fuse his incredible skill at visual precision—the signature of his image-based work in his very first book—with an insistent musical quality, joining visual precision with a beauty of sound.” When Orr was 12, he accidentally killed his brother in a hunting accident, an event his family was never able to talk about. His mother died soon thereafter, and Orr found in poetry the transformative power of language. His near-death experience as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the civil rights movement, in which he was jailed and severely beaten, contributes to the urgency with which his poems seek transformation. In an NPR story on his craft, Orr states, “I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions, and traumatic events that come with being alive.” Orr has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. He has also been a Fulbright Scholar and a Rockefeller Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Culture and Violence, and he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. City of Salt (1995) was a finalist for the LA Times Book Award for Poetry. Orr received his B.A. from Antioch College and his MFA from Columbia University. He founded the MFA program at the University of Virginia in 1975, and was the poetry editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 1978 to 2003.)
The Best Poem Of Gregory Orr
Love Poem
A black biplane crashes through the window
of the luncheonette. The pilot climbs down,
removing his leather hood.
He hands me my grandmother's jade ring.
No, it is two robin's eggs and
a telephone number: yours.
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