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Poetry as Survival
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 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.
242 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2002
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1285 people want to read
About the author
Gregory Orr
37 books105 followersGregory Orr was born in Albany, New York in 1947, and grew up in the rural Hudson Valley. He received a BA degree from Antioch College in 1969 and an MFA from Columbia University in 1972.
He is the author of more than ten collections of poetry, including River Inside the River: Poems (W. W. Norton, 2013); How Beautiful the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2009); Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved (2005); The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems (2002); Orpheus and Eurydice (2001); City of Salt (1995), which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Poetry Prize; Gathering the Bones Together (1975) and Burning the Empty Nests (1973).
He is also the author of a memoir, The Blessing (Council Oak Books, 2002), which was chosen by Publisher's Weekly as one of the fifty best non-fiction books the year, and three books of essays, including Poetry As Survival (2002) and Stanley Kunitz: An Introduction to the Poetry (1985).
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/...
He is the author of more than ten collections of poetry, including River Inside the River: Poems (W. W. Norton, 2013); How Beautiful the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2009); Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved (2005); The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems (2002); Orpheus and Eurydice (2001); City of Salt (1995), which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Poetry Prize; Gathering the Bones Together (1975) and Burning the Empty Nests (1973).
He is also the author of a memoir, The Blessing (Council Oak Books, 2002), which was chosen by Publisher's Weekly as one of the fifty best non-fiction books the year, and three books of essays, including Poetry As Survival (2002) and Stanley Kunitz: An Introduction to the Poetry (1985).
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
April 20, 2021
In lieu of review, here are links to not one, not two, not three, but FOUR posts made using quotes and / or poems from Orr's book. Interesting stuff (uh, if you're interested in poetry, that is):
When Something Strange Pounds on Your Door
When the World Slaps You, Poetry...
When I Becomes Us, the Poet Wins
The Mysterious Equations of Narrative Poetry, Where Less Is More
When Something Strange Pounds on Your Door
When the World Slaps You, Poetry...
When I Becomes Us, the Poet Wins
The Mysterious Equations of Narrative Poetry, Where Less Is More
July 23, 2015
Anyone who writes poetry must read this book.
Anyone who reads poetry must read this book.
Anyone who teaches poetry MUST read this book.
Anyone who has suffered trauma must read this book.
Anyone who works with people who have suffered trauma, must read this book.
This book is not an easy read - it is not a popular market, easy reading memoir. It is a well-researched and well-written analysis of how and why poetry is vital to our survival as humans. How it allows us to cope with the stresses and traumas of being human - how writing poetry, or reading poetry, can keep us alive when life seems like it is tearing us apart. And all this is done, not just by looking at so many of the great authors, like Keats, Blake, Dickinson, Whitman, Plath, etc., but also through Gregory Orr's own gorgeous and eloquent prose and analysis.
He writes:
"We must, the personal lyric tells us, become vulnerable to what is out there (or inside us). Not in order to be destroyed or overwhelmed by it, but as part of a strategy for dealing with it and surviving it. Lyric poetry tells us that it is precisely by letting in disorder that we will gain access to poetry's ability to help us survive." (47)
"When I write a poem to help myself cope with a serious disturbance, I do so by registering the disorder that first destabilized me and then incorporating it into the poem. The literary result is the poem of survival." (130)
"The very hopelessness of the shattered self is its hope, because this devastated self possesses a radical freedom . . . . The self is . . . free to make new connections to the world." (121)
"What certain poets of trauma intuit is that their old self cannot survive the suffering it has experienced without succumbing. Thus necessity permits and compels imagination to create a new self, a self strong enough or different enough to move through and beyond the trauma and its aftermath." (121)
"Surely, we would be right to say that trauma is, by definition among the fiercest and most destructive forms disorder can take. Trauma, either on an intimate or collective scale, has the power to annihilate the self and shred the web of meanings that supports its existence. And yet the evidence of lyric poetry is equally clear - deep in the recesses of the human spirit, there is some instinct to rebuild the web of meanings with the same quiet determination s we witness in the garden spider as it repairs the threads winds and weather have torn." (132)
I could go on and on, but most of the other quotes only work in context of the poems that he is discussing, which is one of the main strengths of this book, that he doesn't deal in abstracts, but rather in well researched specifics, obviously pulling from a deep well of knowledge.
If you like to learn, and be challenged by what you read, read this book. If you are looking for fluff, then don't read it. I, for one, loved this book. My favorite non-fiction book so far all year.
Anyone who reads poetry must read this book.
Anyone who teaches poetry MUST read this book.
Anyone who has suffered trauma must read this book.
Anyone who works with people who have suffered trauma, must read this book.
This book is not an easy read - it is not a popular market, easy reading memoir. It is a well-researched and well-written analysis of how and why poetry is vital to our survival as humans. How it allows us to cope with the stresses and traumas of being human - how writing poetry, or reading poetry, can keep us alive when life seems like it is tearing us apart. And all this is done, not just by looking at so many of the great authors, like Keats, Blake, Dickinson, Whitman, Plath, etc., but also through Gregory Orr's own gorgeous and eloquent prose and analysis.
He writes:
"We must, the personal lyric tells us, become vulnerable to what is out there (or inside us). Not in order to be destroyed or overwhelmed by it, but as part of a strategy for dealing with it and surviving it. Lyric poetry tells us that it is precisely by letting in disorder that we will gain access to poetry's ability to help us survive." (47)
"When I write a poem to help myself cope with a serious disturbance, I do so by registering the disorder that first destabilized me and then incorporating it into the poem. The literary result is the poem of survival." (130)
"The very hopelessness of the shattered self is its hope, because this devastated self possesses a radical freedom . . . . The self is . . . free to make new connections to the world." (121)
"What certain poets of trauma intuit is that their old self cannot survive the suffering it has experienced without succumbing. Thus necessity permits and compels imagination to create a new self, a self strong enough or different enough to move through and beyond the trauma and its aftermath." (121)
"Surely, we would be right to say that trauma is, by definition among the fiercest and most destructive forms disorder can take. Trauma, either on an intimate or collective scale, has the power to annihilate the self and shred the web of meanings that supports its existence. And yet the evidence of lyric poetry is equally clear - deep in the recesses of the human spirit, there is some instinct to rebuild the web of meanings with the same quiet determination s we witness in the garden spider as it repairs the threads winds and weather have torn." (132)
I could go on and on, but most of the other quotes only work in context of the poems that he is discussing, which is one of the main strengths of this book, that he doesn't deal in abstracts, but rather in well researched specifics, obviously pulling from a deep well of knowledge.
If you like to learn, and be challenged by what you read, read this book. If you are looking for fluff, then don't read it. I, for one, loved this book. My favorite non-fiction book so far all year.
July 5, 2012
Orr's work is refreshingly honest, personal, smart, and human/humanist in an age of irony. Like John Gardner he gets back to the basics of what literature ultimately can do for us as people. Absent are the posturing and one-ups-man-ship so prevalent elsewhere. Orr is as sharp a thinker about poetry as anyone...actually, this work reminds me in part of Christian Wiman's recent essays.
November 12, 2015
What a terrific discussion of the lyric impulse and its relationship to the personality and trauma of the poet, exploring the ordering nature of poetic language and looking at work from around the world. Smart, insightful, and engaging, this is one of my favorite books on the notion of lyricism.
June 27, 2015
You have to love poetry, but if you don't you're unlikely to pick this book up anyhow.
The whole thing felt like late night conversations with a friend, at least assuming you're both lit majors.
The whole thing felt like late night conversations with a friend, at least assuming you're both lit majors.
April 23, 2019
Despite the high rating, I have to admit I was kind of disappointed in this book! The first two hundred pages are magic, full of gorgeous interpretations that speak well of Orr's experience as a poet and professor; I learned tons from him here and he prompted a whole lot of thought about trauma and about the uses of poetry for enabling people to create order out of disorder; to marshal thoughts and feelings and make sense of what's going on in a life. I loved how personal he makes poetry. Granted, he's talking about the personal lyric, but he shows readers how to invite it in; how to let poems MOVE us and speak to us and out of their authors. His love of poetry is unmistakable on every page (Lord, does he fanboy HARD over Emily Dickinson!)
But in the last chapter and the appendices it just kind of fizzles out. He's so eager to create (or at least provide a means of creating) order that he sort of de-fangs all that he'd done with some wishy-washy "just change your perspective and invite wonder through poetry into your life to make things better" moralizing stuff. Rather than "sitting with" the poets, tasting their sorrows and their selves, he makes it about personal feel-good stuff, which to me seems a bit cheapening.
He also chooses to exclude religion from his assessments on the basis that finding order and meaning in religion goes against the idea of the personal lyric. Religion is too other-worldly; it can't be experienced with the senses, which is what the personal lyric is about (even in cases of ecstatic release from the body) - thereby lumping all religions together into one rather nebulous blob even though he talks about it as Christianity. In doing this he misses some crucial connections - particularly in overlooking the dynamic and profound repercussions of the Word _becoming flesh and dwelling among us_ on his understanding, and in the interim downplaying the depth of Eliot's anguish even within the Four Quartets and not doing anything at all about Dante. Some other arguments here and there betray his limited understanding of religion - which is fine, except for he was the one who went there, not me.
Admittedly, I'm not going to be satisfied with a philosophy of poetry that doesn't positively link to Scripture and Christianity. That said, again - he was the one that went there, and he didn't have to. I would have given it five stars if he skipped the appendices and had a concluding chapter that wasn't so cheesy!
But in the last chapter and the appendices it just kind of fizzles out. He's so eager to create (or at least provide a means of creating) order that he sort of de-fangs all that he'd done with some wishy-washy "just change your perspective and invite wonder through poetry into your life to make things better" moralizing stuff. Rather than "sitting with" the poets, tasting their sorrows and their selves, he makes it about personal feel-good stuff, which to me seems a bit cheapening.
He also chooses to exclude religion from his assessments on the basis that finding order and meaning in religion goes against the idea of the personal lyric. Religion is too other-worldly; it can't be experienced with the senses, which is what the personal lyric is about (even in cases of ecstatic release from the body) - thereby lumping all religions together into one rather nebulous blob even though he talks about it as Christianity. In doing this he misses some crucial connections - particularly in overlooking the dynamic and profound repercussions of the Word _becoming flesh and dwelling among us_ on his understanding, and in the interim downplaying the depth of Eliot's anguish even within the Four Quartets and not doing anything at all about Dante. Some other arguments here and there betray his limited understanding of religion - which is fine, except for he was the one who went there, not me.
Admittedly, I'm not going to be satisfied with a philosophy of poetry that doesn't positively link to Scripture and Christianity. That said, again - he was the one that went there, and he didn't have to. I would have given it five stars if he skipped the appendices and had a concluding chapter that wasn't so cheesy!
October 26, 2022
A personal charter of the world of poetry, as well as a thesis of various poet’s traumas, real and guessed at.
I dunno. I enjoyed the start of this immensely, and appreciated Orr’s easy command of language throughout the whole thing, but I also felt the second part of this book was a completely different kettle of fish from the first. It was like Orr donned his professor cloak and started teaching, rather than revealing.
I think this book would have been stunning in an MA classroom context, but reading it, out here in the wild, it got a bit repetitive. I also don’t agree with Orr’s easy explanation of trauma creating a poet, especially as he starts to lay out example after example. I think the human spirit is so much more complicated and strange than that. But here again I run into the problem of in-classroom vs outside-of classroom. I’m sure from Orr’s writing that this is exactly the kind of discussion he wanted, but I have no one to talk poetry with, so it just makes me frustrated.
Anyway, but all of that is minor. If you are interested in poetry and the history and some of the mechanics behind it— this book is wonderful.
I dunno. I enjoyed the start of this immensely, and appreciated Orr’s easy command of language throughout the whole thing, but I also felt the second part of this book was a completely different kettle of fish from the first. It was like Orr donned his professor cloak and started teaching, rather than revealing.
I think this book would have been stunning in an MA classroom context, but reading it, out here in the wild, it got a bit repetitive. I also don’t agree with Orr’s easy explanation of trauma creating a poet, especially as he starts to lay out example after example. I think the human spirit is so much more complicated and strange than that. But here again I run into the problem of in-classroom vs outside-of classroom. I’m sure from Orr’s writing that this is exactly the kind of discussion he wanted, but I have no one to talk poetry with, so it just makes me frustrated.
Anyway, but all of that is minor. If you are interested in poetry and the history and some of the mechanics behind it— this book is wonderful.
April 23, 2021
Essential reading did serious poets
July 13, 2023
“Trauma, either on an intimate or a collective scale, has the power to annihilate the self and shred the web of meanings that supports its existence. And yet, the evidence of lyric poetry is equally clear—deep in the recesses of the human spirit, there is some instinct to rebuild the web of meanings with the same quiet determination we witness in the garden spider as it repairs the threads winds and weather have torn.”
“We must, the personal lyric tells us, become vulnerable to what is out there (or inside us). Not in order to be destroyed or overwhelmed by it, but as part of a strategy for dealing with it and surviving it. Lyric poetry tells us it is precisely by letting in disorder that we will gain access to poetry’s ability to help us survive.”
“We must, the personal lyric tells us, become vulnerable to what is out there (or inside us). Not in order to be destroyed or overwhelmed by it, but as part of a strategy for dealing with it and surviving it. Lyric poetry tells us it is precisely by letting in disorder that we will gain access to poetry’s ability to help us survive.”
June 22, 2019
This is not a light, casual read. But the premise of the book is not only enlightening, it's revelatory. The author points out that we all try to mine logical order from the illogical disorder we experience. It's not only our attempt to make sense of things, it's connected to our quest for survival. The author connects this to the art and effort of poetry, but it has application for anything and anyone that attempts to grasp and find meaning out of disorder and trauma. As a counselor of those who have experienced trauma at an early stage of life, I found much in this book that is transferable.
October 25, 2016
Somehow something has gone wrong with poetry in our culture. We have lost touch with its purpose and value, and in doing so, we have lost contact with essential aspects of our own emotional and spiritual lives.
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September 20, 2020This book considers the personal lyric in its attempt to make order out of disorder and counts its process as the antithesis of the sacred, transcendent realm above humanity (sharp lines are drawn dividing Christianity in particular and metaphysical ideals with the personal lyric.) The book is valuable for those not attune to religion or philosophy as ordering processes, and especially for its discussion of poetry from poets such as Wordsworth, Keats, Whitman, Dickinson, Wilfred Owen, Plath, Kunitz and Roethke, and others, like Eliot who embraced religious consolation later in life, dividing himself from “the secular humanism that animates the personal lyric” (p. 205).
When Orr mentions the “sacred lyric” he undoubtedly points beyond it to Christianity itself. According to Orr, “the key distinction between the sacred and secular lyric is this: the sacred imagines order as “up there” (in the sky, in heaven, above the earth) or “over there” (beyond the door of death).” Elsewhere Orr writes “the personal lyric says to the self in its suffering: ‘I will not abandon you. Nor will I ask you to abandon yourself and the felt truth and particulars of your experience’ (p. 29.) This should, to anyone who has ever studied the Bible, bring to mind the words of Jesus: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross’ (Matthew 16:24). Yet Orr does not take into consideration that Jesus did not ask anyone, ever, to abandon one’s self during suffering, but rather to carry their cross, which necessarily includes suffering, and, for some, to endure their thorns in the flesh, because it is through suffering humanity learns humility, among other things. Nor does Orr consider that Jesus himself entered the world of suffering human beings and did not stay “up there in the sky.” In other words, the divine says 'look up, yes, but it also says, look around. It says look at each other and love each other deeply while you are in the world. This isn’t all there is, but while you are here, look. Feel.'
When Orr mentions the “sacred lyric” he undoubtedly points beyond it to Christianity itself. According to Orr, “the key distinction between the sacred and secular lyric is this: the sacred imagines order as “up there” (in the sky, in heaven, above the earth) or “over there” (beyond the door of death).” Elsewhere Orr writes “the personal lyric says to the self in its suffering: ‘I will not abandon you. Nor will I ask you to abandon yourself and the felt truth and particulars of your experience’ (p. 29.) This should, to anyone who has ever studied the Bible, bring to mind the words of Jesus: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross’ (Matthew 16:24). Yet Orr does not take into consideration that Jesus did not ask anyone, ever, to abandon one’s self during suffering, but rather to carry their cross, which necessarily includes suffering, and, for some, to endure their thorns in the flesh, because it is through suffering humanity learns humility, among other things. Nor does Orr consider that Jesus himself entered the world of suffering human beings and did not stay “up there in the sky.” In other words, the divine says 'look up, yes, but it also says, look around. It says look at each other and love each other deeply while you are in the world. This isn’t all there is, but while you are here, look. Feel.'
May 22, 2021
"There are silences that are positive and powerful and willed by the self, but many silences have a destructive origin and destructive consequences. They are the result of shame, or fear or inhibition. In the silence of shame we imagine that if others knew our story they would recoil in disgust or disapproval. Or we can be inhibited by the sense that our experiences have no significance or value. In the silence of fear, it is possible to feel that we are still in danger from hurtful people in our past, or that speaking of something will cause hurt to people we care about. " 87
Orr digs into the the mechanics and process by which poetry is used to survive, interpret or bring meaning to the deep suffering of the poet. Putting indescribable suffering, the loss of parents when young or difficult parents, violence, incest etc into words is harrowing work. But, the traumas often demand to be ordered. Poetry can order a world, but doesn't solve it, or explain it, or heal it completely.
He seems to favor the kind of poetry that eventually will bring a degree of healing or consolation. See 206, and this is also underlined by his comments about Plath on 191.
But it is the analysis of the poems that i love. The deep dive into the lives of poets. What drove them to compose such stunning language?
Favorite new poems i discovered: The Bagel by David Ignatow and also Ode to My Socks by Pablo Neruda.
Orr digs into the the mechanics and process by which poetry is used to survive, interpret or bring meaning to the deep suffering of the poet. Putting indescribable suffering, the loss of parents when young or difficult parents, violence, incest etc into words is harrowing work. But, the traumas often demand to be ordered. Poetry can order a world, but doesn't solve it, or explain it, or heal it completely.
He seems to favor the kind of poetry that eventually will bring a degree of healing or consolation. See 206, and this is also underlined by his comments about Plath on 191.
But it is the analysis of the poems that i love. The deep dive into the lives of poets. What drove them to compose such stunning language?
Favorite new poems i discovered: The Bagel by David Ignatow and also Ode to My Socks by Pablo Neruda.
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July 30, 2023"There are silences that are positive and powerful and willed by the self, but many silences have a destructive origin and destructive consequences. They are the result of shame, or fear, or inhibition. In the silence of shame we imagine that if others knew our story they would recoil in disgust or disapproval. Or we can be inhibited by the sense that our experiences have no significance or value. In the silence of fear it is possible to feel that we are still in danger from hurtful people in our past, or that speaking of something will cause hurt to people we care about." 87
Orr digs into the mechanics and art of survival poetry. He maps out how poets have used language to survive and give some meaning too deep broken-ness and to describe what might an indescribable in prose. The edge of the suffering, for him is the locus for truth-telling. He also seems to favor those who can find a redemptive or live giving direction despite their painful histories (206). Also, his thoughts about Plath seem to indicate this as well (191).
I enjoy reading the analysis of poetry and this book is packed with analysis. It is also helpful to understand the power of language itself as a source of solace for the traumatized. The right kind of word or phrase can heal.
Orr digs into the mechanics and art of survival poetry. He maps out how poets have used language to survive and give some meaning too deep broken-ness and to describe what might an indescribable in prose. The edge of the suffering, for him is the locus for truth-telling. He also seems to favor those who can find a redemptive or live giving direction despite their painful histories (206). Also, his thoughts about Plath seem to indicate this as well (191).
I enjoy reading the analysis of poetry and this book is packed with analysis. It is also helpful to understand the power of language itself as a source of solace for the traumatized. The right kind of word or phrase can heal.
March 19, 2025
While I’m fully on board with the thesis of this book—that poetry provides a space in which both writers and readers can push to the edges of their mental comfort zones, and in so doing become more resilient to life’s natural disorder—as a craft text I found this book a little light on, well, craft. I adore the first half, and would recommend it solely on what’s contained in those ~115 pages, but if you DNF’d after that point I wouldn’t blame you.
It was the chapter on Dickinson where I started to skim a bit, because by then Orr had more or less stopped identifying the specific elements in each poet’s work that demonstrated their ability to navigate order and chaos through the lyric, and was mainly just insisting THAT they were navigating it. I found that somewhat baffling because, of course, I agree, and when I read a book like this, it’s not to be told THAT a poet does something but rather HOW they accomplish it.
It was the chapter on Dickinson where I started to skim a bit, because by then Orr had more or less stopped identifying the specific elements in each poet’s work that demonstrated their ability to navigate order and chaos through the lyric, and was mainly just insisting THAT they were navigating it. I found that somewhat baffling because, of course, I agree, and when I read a book like this, it’s not to be told THAT a poet does something but rather HOW they accomplish it.
December 11, 2017
In this prose work Orr reflects on some heavy themes that have evolved ("invented") from a rich history of the personal lyric "as a means of helping individuals survive the existential crises represented by extremities of subjectivity and also by such outer circumstances as poverty, suffering, pain, illness, violence, or loss of a loved one." In the second section of the book, "Trauma and Transformation" he writes on this theme via the lyrical works a great poets as Keats, Whitman, Dickinson, and Wilfred Owen. Orr offers discerning insight into the human need of survival via a long tradition of translating our crisis into language and giving it symbolic expression as an unfolding drama of self and the forces that assail it. Hence . . .
I emboldened with strength,
lyrically name, order powers,
shape imagination, bring
to bear the disordering
of my existence
I emboldened with strength,
lyrically name, order powers,
shape imagination, bring
to bear the disordering
of my existence
February 19, 2019
I’m very glad I read it. This was a beautiful little book about poets, poetry, life, trauma, war, imagination and more. In a smallish book the author takes us on journeys with Emily Dickenson, Stanley Kunitz, Wilfred Owen, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, and more. It’s a thoughtful, interesting collection that helps me reflect on my own life and my own attention to what is happening around me. I’m very glad I read this book.
August 31, 2018
This was a difficult book to read. Individual sections of it seemed to resonate and make sense, but the book as a collection of chapters did not seem to flow together. The integration of the chapters appears to be oriented around the nature or existence of suffering, seen through the individual lenses of a wide variety of poets.
February 6, 2020
I read this book over the course of about one year. I would read a chapter at a time. It's really thoughtful and instructive about the role of lyric poetry as a kind of self-therapy, cathartic exercise or quite literally a means for survival after tragedy. I thought it would have his poetry which it does not but it has many wonderful poems and analysis.
February 22, 2021
Gorgeous. A must read for anyone who is intimated or uninterested in poetry. Extremely relevant to our cultural traumas in the past few years as well. Poignant, comforting book for any troubled/traumatized soul. 🖤
March 18, 2025
Slow going for me, but the essays that make the book worth reading concerned English poet Wilfred Owen, who chronicled the horrors of WWI and died in combat at 25, and the bit from one of the final chapters on Sylvia Plath.
November 2, 2017
Excellent look at poetry as response to trauma. Could have been better edited. Some very worthwhile thoughts/ideas.
May 25, 2019
Beautiful discussion of lyric poems and poetry as a response to trauma.
September 17, 2019
A brief but sturdy survey of the redeeming power of poetry.
May 1, 2021
I think you have to read this as a self-help book rather than an academic study. (Dickinson’s trauma is her subjectivity? What lol.) Still I would 100% smoke peyote with Greg Orr.
May 24, 2021
It made me think so many thoughts I’d never thunk before. 10/10
September 30, 2021
Loved this beautifully written book about the power of poetry to heal trauma and lead one to a deeper appreciation of one's significance in what might appear to be a chaotic and senseless existence.
June 3, 2025
Very valuable!
May 25, 2010
His workshop in Florida basically came right out of this book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews