Book Quote by Gregory Orr

“Speaking of people I had to exclude: Hank Williams. which is to say, songs are part of lyric poetry in my book, my thinking. In fact they are the urgent element of poetry in our time, they carry the most emotion for the most people in our culture. everyone LOVES poetry, because we all love (one…” quote by Gregory Orr — Download Open image

“Speaking of people I had to exclude: Hank Williams. which is to say, songs are part of lyric poetry in my book, my thinking. In fact they are the urgent element of poetry in our time, they carry the most emotion for the most people in our culture. everyone LOVES poetry, because we all love (one form or another) of rock and roll (be it folk to emo to rap). It's all rock and roll and all lyric poetry.”

Gregory Orr

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More by Gregory Orr

I am committed now to one thing: lyric sequences. I want the intensity of lyric, but the scope and arc of narrative. so, I think I'll just write sequences for the foreseeable (the Beloved sequence doesn't have a 'plot' so I can just keep adding poems to it, it's like a giant bag I can just put beloved lyrics into…

Gregory Orr

No one can threaten poetry. It's always been there, always will be. Humans need it to live: it has sustaining powers. How could we…

Gregory Orr

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I can't actually explain why my lines got shorter, but they did. Just as I can't explain why my early poems were 'all image' and my current ones are relatively abstract. The sense of the line changed with the theme, somehow my ear (or brain or heart/mind) fell in love with a short line and very very simple words.

Gregory Orr

Every breath is a resurrection.

Gregory Orr

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I want language to help us live in a world of wonder/terror/change. I want it to be about "becoming" rather than "being." I think that being and nouns are part of our hopeless dream that time will stop and we will not die. but it's not that way. So, why not celebrate verbs and the beloved's metamorphosis into other people…

Gregory Orr

Another way of saying "put it in the Book" would be that each poem we write pops up in the city of poetry, where…

Gregory Orr

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I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions, and traumatic events that come with being alive.

Gregory Orr

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Poetry is the thread that leads us out of the labyrinth of despair and into the light.

Gregory Orr

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D.H. Lawrence says that myths are "inexhaustible" because they are symbols of heart mysteries. That is, they can't be exhausted - they somehow have embodied some central human mystery (love, loss, being a body in time, who knows which or what?) and thus can be retold infinitely and still be rich. That's part of your saying: it's old, but it's…

Gregory Orr

“Somehow something has gone wrong with poetry in our culture. We have lost touch with its purpose and value, and in doing so, we…

Gregory Orr

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That's crudely put, but If we're not supposed to dance, Why all this music?

Gregory Orr

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“Self-Portrait at Twenty" I stood inside myself like a dead tree or a tower. I pulled the rope of braided hair and high above me a bell of leaves tolled. Because my hand stabbed its brother, I said: Make it stone. Because my tongue spoke harshly, I said: Make it dust. And yet it was not death, but her body…

Gregory Orr

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