Poetry as Survival by Gregory Orr

Poetry as Survival by Gregory Orr

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.

Gregory Orr is a professor of English at the University of Virginia and poetry editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. He is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems, and has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780820324289
ISBN 10	0820324280
Title	Poetry as Survival
Author	Gregory Orr
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University of Georgia Press
Year published	2002-10-31
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable