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How Beautiful the Beloved
“[A] confident, mystical, expansive project.”— Publishers Weekly “[D]azzling and timeless . . . focus is so unwaveringly aimed toward the transcendent—not God, but the beloved—that we seem to slip into a less cluttered time.”— The Virginia Quarterly Review , “Editor’s Choice” "Mary Oliver calls him '...a Walt Whitman without an inch of Whitman's bunting or oratory.' In these pages, he is more nearly a modern-day Rumi. This is not primarily a poetry of image, but of ideas, perfectly distilled. Orr brings together the monumental themes of love and loss in small, spare, and exquisite koan-like poems." —ForeWord "...magnetic poems that open the world of lyrical verse to the larger questions of what is true and timeless."
— The Bloomsbury Review Gregory Orr continues his acclaimed project on the “beloved” with a lyrical sequence about the joys and hungers of being fully engaged in life. Through concise, perfectly formed poems, he wakes us to the ecstatic possibilities of recognizing and risking love. Mary Oliver has called this project “gorgeous,” and said that he "speaks of the events that have no larger or more important rival in our lives—of our love and our loving." If to say it once
And once only, then still
To Yes. And say it complete,
Say it as if the word
Filled the whole moment
With its absolute saying. Later for “but,”
Later for “if.” Now
Only the single syllable
That is the beloved.
That is the world. Gregory Orr is the author of ten books of poetry. He teaches at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville.
— The Bloomsbury Review Gregory Orr continues his acclaimed project on the “beloved” with a lyrical sequence about the joys and hungers of being fully engaged in life. Through concise, perfectly formed poems, he wakes us to the ecstatic possibilities of recognizing and risking love. Mary Oliver has called this project “gorgeous,” and said that he "speaks of the events that have no larger or more important rival in our lives—of our love and our loving." If to say it once
And once only, then still
To Yes. And say it complete,
Say it as if the word
Filled the whole moment
With its absolute saying. Later for “but,”
Later for “if.” Now
Only the single syllable
That is the beloved.
That is the world. Gregory Orr is the author of ten books of poetry. He teaches at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville.
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2009
21 people are currently reading
313 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
July 15, 2014
This book was exactly the book I wanted and needed to read right when I read it. Every poem reads like a prayer, and since no poem is titled, it reads like a dirge of prayers, a litany. And every poem/prayer is someway addressed or directed towards the beloved, and since Orr never clarifies who the beloved is, the beloved could be straightforward human love poems, but they also very much could be love poems written to God. Some poems read as more human directed, and some as more God directed, but all could be read as one or the other. I ended up copying about half the book into my journal, and so cannot/will not quote all the poems that I loved, but I'll put one here as a sample.
The Book said we were mortal;
It didn't say we had to be morbid.
The Book said the beloved died,
But also that she comes again,
That he's reborn as words.
The Book said: Everything perishes.
The Book said: That's why we sing. (6)
This poem does something that a lot of the poems do, which is gender switch the beloved, which could be read as a way so that the experience of the beloved (person) could work for all readers, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, but it also reads as a prayer/testament to a beloved that transcends genders.
I have no idea if these poems are well crafted. That is something I usually read for, and can articulate how and why the poems are good in regards to their layering of imagery, sound, meter, form, etc., but these poems just speak straight to my core, and I give this book five stars not because it is a definitive example in excellence in craft, but because this is the book that opened up the world and showed it to me in a way that was both deeply familiar and startlingly new, that was comforting and challenging, reassuring and provocative. Quite simply, I love this book.
The Book said we were mortal;
It didn't say we had to be morbid.
The Book said the beloved died,
But also that she comes again,
That he's reborn as words.
The Book said: Everything perishes.
The Book said: That's why we sing. (6)
This poem does something that a lot of the poems do, which is gender switch the beloved, which could be read as a way so that the experience of the beloved (person) could work for all readers, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, but it also reads as a prayer/testament to a beloved that transcends genders.
I have no idea if these poems are well crafted. That is something I usually read for, and can articulate how and why the poems are good in regards to their layering of imagery, sound, meter, form, etc., but these poems just speak straight to my core, and I give this book five stars not because it is a definitive example in excellence in craft, but because this is the book that opened up the world and showed it to me in a way that was both deeply familiar and startlingly new, that was comforting and challenging, reassuring and provocative. Quite simply, I love this book.
January 12, 2025
There's something about the frank, luminous, simplistic way that Orr writes that soothes and nourishes me. He does so much in such a little, echoing space that many others can (and will, it you're me) take years and pages to say; all in all, his frankness and lightness of being bring such a warmth to all who read and engage with it. A loving, lovely chapter of his work, one that I will return to often, I think.
January 30, 2022
Gelip geçiciliği Orr kadar güzel yazan şaire denk gelmedim. Son sayfalardaki Nazım Hikmet şiiri de sürpriz oldu. Tek kelimeyle mükemmel.
October 10, 2025
Read this aloud by a lake with the person who recc’ed it to me, and everything connected beautifully.
Shoutout to this guy for loving his wife.
Shoutout to this guy for loving his wife.
March 21, 2023
I suggest that you read this book aloud to yourself in one sitting if possible.
It will only take about an hour.
What a beautiful meditation on savoring life, love and the embodied experience of grief.
It will only take about an hour.
What a beautiful meditation on savoring life, love and the embodied experience of grief.
September 5, 2024
Lovely
Equal parts poetry and affirmation.
It's about G-d it's about love, alot of the time it's about both at the same time.
He has a knack for verbalising what can't be put into words.
Maybe that's all poetry is?
Equal parts poetry and affirmation.
It's about G-d it's about love, alot of the time it's about both at the same time.
He has a knack for verbalising what can't be put into words.
Maybe that's all poetry is?
February 4, 2012
Knowing Greg and his wife definitely helped me appreciate this book more. I saw Tricia's artwork based on the beloved poems a few years ago, and only recently realized that she was pulling from a whole collection. These poems aren't typical for Greg necessarily--they are v. Rumi-esque, mystical, celebratory, and distilled. Some of them hit much harder than others, but they're the sort of tiny poems that bring one comfort with every reading.
August 15, 2012
Some day when I begin to write my life out in poetic form, this is how I would aspire to write it. Rarely, have I felt I understood so much of what an author is trying to convey, in so few words. This guy is amazing.
June 10, 2023
Every time I read this book, I read it aloud cover to cover in one sitting and I weep and laugh and am reminded of why I am alive. I love Greg Orr and this is one of my favorite books of all time. God bless poetry and god bless the beloved!!!!
May 25, 2010
Surprisingly, some poems were repeated in this one, from the last book. But still awesome.
February 28, 2015
Anything Orr creates in this vein is worth reading.
Read
January 25, 2016Short poems that tell a sort of story grouped together.
July 1, 2019
I read this book after hearing Gregory Orr interviewed for almost an hour on the On Being podcast. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I felt a kind of solidity to Orr and his bare bones ability to celebrate life in it both its darkness and its light felt powerfully true to me. In my mind, the poetry in this book deals with two big ideas: the power of words (“the Book”) and the blessing and curse of being mortal ( “the Beloved.”)
In my mind, “the Book” is all the words that have meant something in Orr’s life and/or each reader’s personal life. The words we carry in us from books, quotes, reminders, sayings, lyrics, have given shape to our experience, creating a form in which to savor the joyous, beautiful or comforting and bear the painful, the ugly, the frightening. For other readers, of course, it may mean many other things.
Some commenters interpret the Beloved as an individual person and sometimes I think Orr clearly intends that. Some interpret the Beloved as God and though I think Orr might not use that word, I’m sure he’s fine with that. For me, the Beloved is just life with both its darkness and its light. I think the Beloved is expressed as both masculine and feminine because it’s neither and both. The Beloved, life, is a gift that we should remember to celebrate and a burden that we bear, all of us knowing that we and the people we love will die. As he ends one poem, “How brave we all are!”
I love the openness of these poems, the fact that we can each bring our lives to them and find connection, comfort and shared delight.
My personal favorite on this first pass-through is probably this one:
This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving, left to us.
No other world,
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.
No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.
No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.
That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.
In my mind, “the Book” is all the words that have meant something in Orr’s life and/or each reader’s personal life. The words we carry in us from books, quotes, reminders, sayings, lyrics, have given shape to our experience, creating a form in which to savor the joyous, beautiful or comforting and bear the painful, the ugly, the frightening. For other readers, of course, it may mean many other things.
Some commenters interpret the Beloved as an individual person and sometimes I think Orr clearly intends that. Some interpret the Beloved as God and though I think Orr might not use that word, I’m sure he’s fine with that. For me, the Beloved is just life with both its darkness and its light. I think the Beloved is expressed as both masculine and feminine because it’s neither and both. The Beloved, life, is a gift that we should remember to celebrate and a burden that we bear, all of us knowing that we and the people we love will die. As he ends one poem, “How brave we all are!”
I love the openness of these poems, the fact that we can each bring our lives to them and find connection, comfort and shared delight.
My personal favorite on this first pass-through is probably this one:
This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving, left to us.
No other world,
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.
No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.
No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.
That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.
January 21, 2024
Highlights:
- "Words, of course, but / Also the silence / Between them."
- (on candy hearts) "The wonder of it: words / Printed on the heart, / As if each heart could speak / And chose to speak of love."
- "everything's / Waiting for you to notice. / Everything's waiting for you / To wrap your heart around it."
- "Little fish of feeling, small / As the beloved's toes; / Little nibblers like erotic / Shivers. / Caught in the net / And hauled up on deck- / Spilled in a silver heap in your lap. / Weaves a net wide as the sky, / Yet able to catch the tiniest fish- / How does the Book do that?"
- "The poem he's writing is a list / Of things he suddenly knows / Are precious." ... "As long as he keeps making that list, / He's traveling toward the beloved."
- "Words, of course, but / Also the silence / Between them."
- (on candy hearts) "The wonder of it: words / Printed on the heart, / As if each heart could speak / And chose to speak of love."
- "everything's / Waiting for you to notice. / Everything's waiting for you / To wrap your heart around it."
- "Little fish of feeling, small / As the beloved's toes; / Little nibblers like erotic / Shivers. / Caught in the net / And hauled up on deck- / Spilled in a silver heap in your lap. / Weaves a net wide as the sky, / Yet able to catch the tiniest fish- / How does the Book do that?"
- "The poem he's writing is a list / Of things he suddenly knows / Are precious." ... "As long as he keeps making that list, / He's traveling toward the beloved."
June 7, 2025
recommended listening: I Know the End by Phoebe Bridgers
perfect place to start w gregory orr <3 some poems took my breath away. yes, the beloved. the world is because of the beloved. the world is beloved because of my beloved.
This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.
No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.
No other shore, only this bank On which the living gather.
No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.
That, and the beloved's clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.
perfect place to start w gregory orr <3 some poems took my breath away. yes, the beloved. the world is because of the beloved. the world is beloved because of my beloved.
This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.
No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.
No other shore, only this bank On which the living gather.
No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.
That, and the beloved's clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.
July 20, 2018
His style is so direct and straightforward. This collection is paying attention to ways of being engaged in the world and especially ways of loving. The first poem is a good example:
If to say it once
And once only, then still
To say: Yes.
And say it complete,
Say it as if the word
Filled the whole moment
With its absolute saying.
Later for "but,"
Later for "if."
Now
Only the single syllable
That is the beloved,
That is the world.
If to say it once
And once only, then still
To say: Yes.
And say it complete,
Say it as if the word
Filled the whole moment
With its absolute saying.
Later for "but,"
Later for "if."
Now
Only the single syllable
That is the beloved,
That is the world.
February 6, 2024
Being being nothing
But breath
And the fog it makes
On the windowpane,
Which is a page
In the Book
On which
You write your name.
[p. 82]
-------
Sometimes the poem
Changes you slowly,
As if eroding the old life.
You have to be patient
With the way it unfolds--
One line at a time.
So unlike the beloved:
All at once and forever.
[p. 84]
-------
Poem that opened you--
The opposite of a wound.
Didn't the world
Come pouring through?
[p. 90]
But breath
And the fog it makes
On the windowpane,
Which is a page
In the Book
On which
You write your name.
[p. 82]
-------
Sometimes the poem
Changes you slowly,
As if eroding the old life.
You have to be patient
With the way it unfolds--
One line at a time.
So unlike the beloved:
All at once and forever.
[p. 84]
-------
Poem that opened you--
The opposite of a wound.
Didn't the world
Come pouring through?
[p. 90]
July 28, 2024
This smaller collection definitely seemed, to me, like an addendum to the first collection (if it's that obvious I'm sorry, lol): Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved. While that one was longer—digging into particular grief, like being underwater and sitting with the hard things of loss and pain—How Beautiful the Beloved is the deep inhale you take when you come up for air. It's shouting in various quiet ways, "Yes, grief. But Love, and Live!"
November 7, 2020
Gregory Orr explores the pursuit and discovery of "the beloved" as a choice. "How we embraced the beloved / so tightly that fate itself / was changed into destiny" Orr's verses offer a redemptive invitation, "Breaking open / the dry bones of each / letter - seeking / the secret of life / that must be hidden inside"
September 27, 2022
I’ve returned to this book over and over again since first reading it in 2020. Despite it being a very short book (and the poems themselves quite brief), I always discover something I hadn’t noticed before. Oftentimes, something I needed to discover at that very moment, helping me through loss, indecision, and victory. This is very much a guide book to handling grief, love, and joy with grace.
August 13, 2023
Some good lines, but dangerously close to Rupi Kaur territory in its unpoetic simplicity. I like short poems but this collection just read like a bunch of unfinished thoughts expressed in an extended metaphor that didn't really land half the time (maybe I need to read his other "Beloved" book first, idk).
April 22, 2021
I love Orr's poems about the beloved. I could mark almost every one as a favorite. This will be a very easy book to come back to again and again. These poems seem to me like the result of a life trying to reconcile loss. They are hopeful and joyous.
December 13, 2023
“Surrender everything. Give up / All that’s precious — / That way you won’t be tempted / to bicker with yourself / over scraps you still control.”
🥹 some poems read like an earnest prayer but honestly quite a forgettable collection….
🥹 some poems read like an earnest prayer but honestly quite a forgettable collection….
September 9, 2021
Amazing. In these short poems, Orr touches the heart of love, of the world, and for me, of God. Exquisite. I'd been waiting just for these poems.
July 21, 2022
Poems about loving the world and what it means to be fully here.
December 24, 2022
"Poem that opened you —
The opposite of a wound.
Didn't the world
Come pouring through?"
The opposite of a wound.
Didn't the world
Come pouring through?"
Read
July 11, 2023The Beloved and the Book
Read
January 27, 2025squander it all!
hold nothing back.
the heart is a deep well.
and when it’s empty,
it will fill again.
hold nothing back.
the heart is a deep well.
and when it’s empty,
it will fill again.
September 18, 2010
At first I was pretty into this, a book length meditation, in the form of a long poem, on the potential of the poem to grieve, how it might give you a language to talk about and work through loss.... the poems are short, the words small, and the overall sense of it is surprisingly breezy, given the subject matter.
But there're elements that sort of rankled, from pretty early on-- one of them was the way that Orr allowed for the beloved to be a he or a she, in the same poem. I understand the inclination to be inclusive, I think, but it sort of took me out of the poem, since I don't think that Orr's beloved was both.... In other words, the poems shifted, at least in my mind, from being personal to be programmatic. Suddenly, I felt like Orr wasn't on this journey with me, but was instead narrating into my ear from outside the experience, and that bugged me a little.
Later sections of the poem, I think, suffered from the limited vocabulary Orr works with-- the poems began to feel like an acrostic, an intellectual rather than an emotional exercise. And really, I like intellectual exercise; it's my favorite kind. But given the subject matter, I didn't really expect that kind of approach, and it also kind of bothered me.
And finally, the poems don't seem to go anywhere.... I didn't feel like the limits Orr has written himself into are ever transcended.
There are good individual poems here, if you want to read them as that, and there's an appealing simplicity to lots of this. But a whole book worth of it seemed a little much to me.
But there're elements that sort of rankled, from pretty early on-- one of them was the way that Orr allowed for the beloved to be a he or a she, in the same poem. I understand the inclination to be inclusive, I think, but it sort of took me out of the poem, since I don't think that Orr's beloved was both.... In other words, the poems shifted, at least in my mind, from being personal to be programmatic. Suddenly, I felt like Orr wasn't on this journey with me, but was instead narrating into my ear from outside the experience, and that bugged me a little.
Later sections of the poem, I think, suffered from the limited vocabulary Orr works with-- the poems began to feel like an acrostic, an intellectual rather than an emotional exercise. And really, I like intellectual exercise; it's my favorite kind. But given the subject matter, I didn't really expect that kind of approach, and it also kind of bothered me.
And finally, the poems don't seem to go anywhere.... I didn't feel like the limits Orr has written himself into are ever transcended.
There are good individual poems here, if you want to read them as that, and there's an appealing simplicity to lots of this. But a whole book worth of it seemed a little much to me.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews