River Inside the River: Poems - Hardcover

Orr, Gregory

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393239748 ISBN 13: 9780393239744

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013

Synopsis

Three gorgeous poetic sequences that combine the intensity of lyric with the thematic scope and range of narrative and myth.

From the acclaimed American poet whose work the San Francisco Review called “mystical, carnal, reflective, wry” come three gorgeous poetic sequences. In the first, “Eden and After,” Gregory Orr retells the story of Adam and Eve. The second sequence, “The City of Poetry,” evokes and explores a visionary metropolis where “every poem is a house, and every house a poem.” The final sequence, “River Inside the River,” focuses on redemption through the mysterious power of language to resurrect the beloved and recover what is lost. River Inside the River combines Orr’s characteristic spirituality and meditative lyricism with storytelling and myth-making. These are poems that will sustain, console, and give hope, from a poet at the height of his powers.

About this title

About the Author

Gregory Orr has written twelve poetry collections, a memoir, and several books of criticism, most recently A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry. The recipient of Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Reviews

*Starred Review* Orr’s collection consists of three sequences of poems. “Eden and After” retells the biblical creation story, piquantly shifting its climax from the temptation and the eating of the apple to the couple’s first lovemaking (“With their embrace / They chose / Each other / Which is / To choose death”). “The City of Poetry” envisions all human community and history as an agglomeration of poem-houses; fittingly, it describes the “dwellings” of many specific master poets and recalls constructive incidents in Orr’s own poet’s life. “River inside the River” replies to the fall of Adam and Eve with the redemption of “the Book / that is the resurrection / of the body of the beloved, / which is the world.” Binding the sequences together is love, of course, which we manifest in words because “All we have is words,” ever since God “cleared His throat / And spoke.” Though as erudite, as full of allusion and citation, as the work of any other poet full of the history of his craft, these poems are as straightforward in expression, as plain in vocabulary as any strict literary modernist could wish them to be. Moreover, their music and imagery constantly conjure the aura of Chinese and Japanese classical poetry. They’re exquisite and earthy simultaneously. --Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393239748
• ISBN 13: 9780393239744
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160