"Are all poems melancholy?" my parents asked me as we drove through the dark towards Massanutten.
rats, I thought, I knew I should have started with Gregory Orr.
No, not all poems are melancholy. Some poems fairly jump off the page with joy:
Gregory Orr is interesting to me for many reasons; for example, the fact that he requested to be part of the Mennonite Writing Conference at EMU in 2012, despite the fact that he is not religious.
Also that he was wearing jeans and workman style leather boots at the reading he gave, and at the meet-and-greet later that day; he didn't "look" like a poet.
Also that he let me sit at a table with him in the open space on the second floor of the University Commons, and, after signing the book I bought, asked me about what I love about writing.
Also that when he was 12 years old, he accidentally killed his brother in a hunting accident, and still somehow seems to be a healthy and well-functioning human being.
He seemed like a really lovely human, actually, and his poems are full of hope. Full of hope that everything can be said, that there's nothing that is unsayable, that terrible things can find some sort of redemption, that the heart of life is good.
thus, I present:
to see the beloved, by Gregory Orr.
rats, I thought, I knew I should have started with Gregory Orr.
No, not all poems are melancholy. Some poems fairly jump off the page with joy:
To be alive: not just the carcass-"To be Alive," Gregory Orr
But the spark.
That's crudely put, but…
If we're not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?
Gregory Orr is interesting to me for many reasons; for example, the fact that he requested to be part of the Mennonite Writing Conference at EMU in 2012, despite the fact that he is not religious.
Also that he was wearing jeans and workman style leather boots at the reading he gave, and at the meet-and-greet later that day; he didn't "look" like a poet.
Also that he let me sit at a table with him in the open space on the second floor of the University Commons, and, after signing the book I bought, asked me about what I love about writing.
Also that when he was 12 years old, he accidentally killed his brother in a hunting accident, and still somehow seems to be a healthy and well-functioning human being.
He seemed like a really lovely human, actually, and his poems are full of hope. Full of hope that everything can be said, that there's nothing that is unsayable, that terrible things can find some sort of redemption, that the heart of life is good.
thus, I present:
to see the beloved, by Gregory Orr.
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