Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved

Gregory Orr

Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved is an incantatory celebration that pushes the ecstatic lyric into epic realms. Gregory Orr discovers the Beloved in everything, everywhere, and reconnects us—in the tradition of Rumi and Hafiz—to our emotional lives. Orr's ambitious and visionary lyrics explore every dimension of what it is to be human, and this imagined "Book" is a dynamic repository of expressive forms that tells humanity's stories.

Poet Mary Oliver says of the book: "Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved is, as Greg Orr’s work has always been, firm and definitive, as is the first step on a ladder. But this time his book has a new and thrilling dimension. What other poet do you know who would give his work such a title—ambitious and humble at the same time? He speaks now, in these many short poems, which in their entirety are really one long poem, of mysteries, of those things—emotions, situations, mind and heart states—which are beyond the definitive. In earlier works he spoke of events that were applicable to himself perhaps, and also to some other lives, but were not general; here he speaks of the events that have no larger or more important rival in our lives—of our love and our loving, which is both general to us as humans and yet particular to each of us. Greg Orr is here a Walt Whitman without an inch of Whitman’s bunting or oratory. Greg Orr is a gorgeous poet and this is a gorgeous book."

Binding: paper

ISBN: 1-55659-229-9

Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved

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$18.00