City Of Salt (Pitt Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Gregory Orr (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Stark, chillingly beautiful poems that record the unraveling of a family and their doomed attempt, moving to another country, to rebuild.”
--Prairie Schooner

"A reader unfamiliar with Orr's work may be surprised, at first, by the richness of both action and visual detail that his succinct, spare poems convey. Lyricism can erupt in the midst of desolation."
--Boston Globe

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (May 4, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822955571
• ISBN-13: 978-0822955573
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,317,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greg Orr's masterpiece, April 18, 2005

By 

Nicholas Pingatore (MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: City Of Salt (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

Gregory Orr opens his book of poems with the five lined poem, "Origin of the Marble forest" which is a masterfully created poem about childhood. This first poem captures a moment of childhood nostalgia with piercing precision, and accomplishes this in only five lines. The first poem is only the tip of the ice berg when it comes to Orr's unique style of poetry. The book has a somewhat grim feeling to it and can be chewy at times, but underneath all of the poems there is hope and closure. Orr touches a lot on his mother and brother's death, but even though this subject is touched on multiple times, Orr is able to keep all the poems new and fresh to the reader. This is where Orr really shines, it his ability to touch on subjects of the same attitude, yet he is able to introduce new ideas and perspectives with each poem. One of the best crafted poems in the book is "I found a Bird", in this piece Orr touches on his questioning of self worth in alternating point of views between him and his daughter, the poem is broken into short excerpts, the most moving of which are the lines where he uses his daughter as an inspiration. The poem reads, "I found a bird. / It is night./ I am small./ I am happy now./ the lamp is lit." the serenity and beauty that Orr is able to capture and a few lines of poetry seems to be one of his greatest talents, he showcases this further in "three small songs" and "elegy" in which the poems are broken up into short excerpts that have the power and serenity of a silent freight train. I would highly recommend reading Gregory Orr's "The City of Salt" he uses a dark tone in most of his work, yet has a bright undertone that keeps all the poems fresh to the reader and keeps the reader moving from one poem to the next. The only drawback to the book would be Orr tendency to go back to his brothers death, in which Orr accidentally killed his brother in a hunting accident, this may bother some readers if they are looking for something new and exciting in each poem, I myself was more than happy to venture further into Orr's struggle with the death of his brother, and the fact the Orr kept each experience fresh helped greatly.

5.0 out of 5 stars City of Salt: A Work of Simplistic Art, April 19, 2005

By 

Steve Diggs Jr. (Woodland, MD, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City Of Salt (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

Gregory Orr uses a style that is very straight-forward. The poems have a very serious tone. Most of the poems are not very funny. There is usually a point to each poem that is conveyed strongly throughout the poem. A Litany is one poem that has a message that is echoed throughout the poem. The speaker, who is a boy, in the poem shoots his brother. There are a lot of solemn and sad things that go along in the poem that echo the fact the speaker shot his brother. The speaker runs off into his room and the reader does not even know what the speaker did. It is all suspenseful and then about halfway into the poem, the speaker says that he just shot his brother. This is an excellent form of using poems for suspense as the reader is left wondering what happened.
In My Father's Voice, Orr is to the point and leaves really nothing to the imagination in what he did not put in. In the poem, the father screamed at his daughter. It is shown well as the daughter braces herself for the screaming from the father. The daughter's face goes blank and the imagery of the father screaming at the girl is conveyed well. There is no extra lines that are not needed in this poem. It is a nine line poem that gets its point across very quickly and stays on task.
Three Small Songs is another poem that conveys Orr's straight-forward style and his clearly stated points. The first two stanzas are about life and how humans do not live long. It is shown in eight lines very beautifully with the last two lines ending,
we're here
and then we're gone.

The next stanza is about when a mother cries so will the child. It is a very short five lines that tells the reader about a child trying not to cry when the mother is crying. The next stanza is about the speaker as a child lying on the ground at dusk. The stanza shows a child's youthfulness by showing a child just lying on the ground at dusk. A very quick and to the point five lines, Orr's stanzas all mesh together.
Orr's style works very well. He does not dance around the point and has a very serious tone to his poems. His poems are also very calculating with each line seemingly placed in with great precision. City of Salt is a great read. Nothing is left to question after reading his work. His poems give the answers to every question that could arise in his work.