Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved [Paperback]

Gregory Orr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2005

“The heart of Orr’s poetry, now as ever, is the enigmatic image . . . mystical, carnal, reflective, wry.”—San Francisco Review

This book-length sequence of ecstatic, visionary lyrics recalls Rumi in its search for the beloved and its passionate belief in the healing qualities of art and beauty.

Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved is an incantatory celebration of the “Book,” an imaginary and self-gathering anthology of all the lyrics—both poems and songs—ever written. Each poem highlights a distinct aspect of the human condition, and together the poems explore love, loss, restoration, the beauty of the world, the beauty of the beloved, and the mystery of poetry. The purpose and power of the Book is to help us live by reconnecting us to the world and to our emotional lives.

I put the beloved
In a wooden coffin.
The fire ate his body;
The flames devoured her.
I put the beloved
In a poem or song.
Tucked it between
Two pages of the Book.
How bright the flames.
All of me burning,
All of me on fire
And still whole.

There is nothing quite like this book—an “active anthology” in the best sense—where individuals find the poems and songs that will sustain them. Or the poems find them.

Gregory Orr is the author of eight books of poetry, four volumes of criticism, and a memoir. He has received numerous awards for his work, most recently the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Orr has taught at the University of Virginia since 1975 and was, for many years, the poetry editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives with his family in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Orr's first book since The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems (2002) has little in common with the hushed, observant lyric that made his reputation in the 1970s; this eighth collection is, instead, a confident, mystical, expansive project, whose very clear short poems (almost 200 of them) constitute a meditation and ritual for grieving a lost beloved. The first poem invokes the Egyptian god Osiris, whose lover Isis resurrected him by collecting his scattered parts: "We must find them... As an anthologist might collect/ All the poems that matter," Orr intones. As he pursues that goal, however, his own poems can be overbroad in focus: "The heart knows all/ These songs/ And a million of its own," one poem says. "The risk is always there," a later poem states, "And the challenge, too: To take it in, to feel it, and then/ To speak it back in poems and songs." "When the beloved dies," he explains later, "It's only to ask more of you,/ So you become richer from giving." Near the end, Orr describes his own poetry as "a silent saying/ Of all/ We hold dear." Poems about earlier poets (Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Apollinaire) add detail but fail to change the tone. (Nov.)
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About the Author

Gregory Orr is the author of ten books of poetry, four collections of criticism, and a memoir that was selected by Publishers Weekly as a "Best Book of the Year." The former poetry editor for the Virginia Quarterly Review, Orr teaches at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press; First Edition edition (September 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556592299
• ISBN-13: 978-1556592294
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #153,666 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars powerful, wise, moving book, February 9, 2006

By 

Ilya V. Kaminsky (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved (Paperback)

It is rare when a recognized poet, at the very height
of his talent, gives up the maneuvers and troupes that
gained him success, turns away--to begin something
completely new. "It is myself that I revise," Yeats
wrote. And in this powerful new collection, Gregory
Orr does just that. "Concerning the Book that Is the
Body of the Beloved" is a 200 page long spiritual
mediation of epic proportion, described as "an
incantatory celebration of the Book, an imaginary and
self-gathering anthology of all the lyrics-both poems
and songs-ever written." The description is apt, but
somewhat limiting. For in addition to its imaginary
epic ambition to be "an anthology gathered / since the
beginning of time, / gathering itself" the book also
serves as an ars poetica, a declaration of this poet's
intent to be open ("the poem didn't express / emotion,
it was emotion") in giving the voice ("to give form /
to her love and grief") to the deceased, and in doing
so to find his voice's origin. Orr's philosophy
touches upon the limitation of human reach ("unable to
touch / the body of the beloved because / inches of it
cover your skin"), uttering ("do words outlast / the
world / they describe?") and vision ("too many
mysteries... Why don't we stop") to propose the feeling
as the key to our understanding of our being here ("to
see the beloved, / to be seen by the beloved: / that's
where being starts"). His philosophy is very
skillfully grounded by the intimate details of this
world: "When my kids look for me I hope / they can
find min in the house, / or reach me by phone. // When
that won't work, / I hope they can find me in... the
poem or song someone wrote / or one of my own." This
grounding of the subliminal is very effective as the
collection proceeds to offer elegies to Orr's brother,
love poems to his wife, and moving invocations of
authors of various times, from Sapho to Apollinaire.
Observing his own time, Orr also serves an angry
indictment of the stagnation taking place in today's
literary arena, of writers who are "half-asleep" in
their work, who "could care less". For Orr cares. The
passion ("to feel, to feel, to feel") is evident.
Orr invests an enormous amount of emotional energy
("for me, my brother / ...the first departure / that
tore my heart") in the brief, spare lyrics. That is,
perhaps, what makes the book work so well: the volume
of Orr's voice can be loud or quiet, a whisper or an
incantation, but it is always emotionally charged,
always appealing to the reader's senses. It is by the
way of the heart that his wisdom comes: "You might
think the things I say / are too simple for words, /
too embarrassing to be spoken. // But if I repeat the
obvious, / where's the harm in that? // May be it was
always simple: / loss surrounds us".
The book's larger frame is the imaginary spiritual
text of "a self gathering of poems" that bear witness
to the world in which they are written, providing the
key to that world. This clear but quite ambitious
structure is balanced by Orr's skill as a poet. For
instance, he can be very musical: "Scar they stare at.
/ Scar they're scared of...a brightness that frightens."
He can also show how directness can reflect one's
inner turmoil, achieving insight: "A few things you
might want to know: / I am not an idiot. / I am not a
mystic. I've read / poems since before most people /
on the planet were born. / Read them and written them,
too. All the time believing they helped / me to live.
I was right. But / I was also wrong. /...Loss seemed to
me / the most of it. I believed in love / but I
thought its name was loss. / And worse: when I said
"life" / I meant "death." When I said "death" / I have
no idea what I meant."
What is most astonishing for me about "Concerning the Book
that is the Body of the Beloved" is that is
constitutes a book-long spiritual undertaking that's
also-unlike most projects of this sort--is very good
and readable poetry. Orr's charged and emotional lyric
reminds of Song of Songs' musical tide ("The world
comes into the poem./The poem comes into the
world./...As with lovers:/When it's right you can't
say/who is kissing whom") as well as the plain-spoken
intensity of Rumi. The composition of his collection
as a whole, however, and the thinking behind it, are
quite complex--in a way Edmond Jabes's work is a
complex tapestry ("I read the book for years / and
never understood a word") where the meaning is given
for a moment, and then taken away; but the
understanding remains. It is a wonderful, moving book. I recommend it highly.
--Ilya Kaminsky

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry For Survival, December 28, 2008

By 

Steven Elliott (Orland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved (Paperback)

I don't remember now how I first encountered this book of poems. I bought a copy, read it straight through, and was so moved that I bought several more copies and gave them out to my closest friends last Christmas, 2007. I preach and teach at church and I read several of the poems to our congregation. While not a religious book, Orr's themes are the universal ones that touch all of us: life, death, loss, love and, of course the role poetry plays (like faith) in comprehending them all. I suppose, because of my own experiences of significant loss early in life (my best friend, my sister...), Orr's history resonated with me. I had no idea. A few short months after I fell in love with this book, in February 2008, my own precious 18 year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. Orr's book was still sitting on my nightstand, and, while I have read many helpful books about loss and grief, nothing has spoken to me like Concerning The Book That Is The Body Of The Beloved. I have turned to it again and again, and everytime I read it I find new insight, solace, a source of strength. As I have grieved, I have marveled at the total authenticity of Orr's writing. Here is someone who has passed through the fire, survived, and describes the experience, now, as a "blessing." The pain and loss has been transfigured and Orr has returned to bless others with the wisdom and compassion he has gained. It is a message of hope to those who are blind and lost because of their grief. Yesterday morning I read several poems in tears out loud to my wife from the Book that perfectly captured our experience...and offered a small glimmer of hope.
I simply can't recommend this Book enough. I have re-read this book more than any book in my considerable library. It a dear friend, a roadmap, a lantern. If the house was on fire, this book would be one of the precious things I would gather and take with me. It is that good. You don't have to be an intellectual or a poet to understand or appreciate it. Only human. The language is simple and direct and unpretentious. I am amazed at Orr's ability to address our deepest experiences without getting lost in the language. If you like Rumi or Rilke, you will find a familiar voice here. I am a poet myself. I am not sure I have come to the place where I believe that poetry resurrects the beloved. I wish it could. But poetry, at least the poetry Mr. Orr has written, has been a life saver. It has helped me to survive.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the very best poetry...and more, June 26, 2007

By 

Pit Menousek Pinegar, poet (Plainville, CT 06062) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved (Paperback)

I most appreciate poetry that is accompaniment, poetry that leaves me knowing that I'm in intimately shared territory. We're not often encouraged to think of poetry that way. Poets, teachers and students of poetry are apt to think about poems (and collections of poems) in terms of poetic prowess, academic discipline or literary analysis. There's nothing wrong with doing that, but skill and intellectual examinations and appreciations by themselves won't keep me returning to a book almost daily, over a period of years. I want something more. This book continues to bring me the pleasures and consolations of accompaniment, the rigors of provocation, and inspiration to re-think/re-envision the capacities of The Poem/The Word/The World, and our capacities to experience them. I FEEL these poems--as a pulse, as a heartbeat. They are like filaments that bridge the gaps between body and psyche and soul.

Among many other things, CONCERNING THE BOOK THAT IS THE BODY OF THE BELOVED is a daring spiritual undertaking, a meditation, an expression of gratitude, an examination of life process and poetic process and the relationships between the two. The language of these poems is deceptively simple, their premises infinitely complex. My copy of this book opens familiarly to two pages, so I seem to start each day with one or the other:

The world comes into the poem,
The poem comes into the world.
Reciprocity--it all comes down
To that.
As with lovers:
When it's right you can't say
Who is kissing whom.

and from the other: ...
Was there anything
More wonderful?

How long did it last?
Maybe only a moment;
Maybe it was a dream.
We were afraid
To feel such joy.

(stanza break)


Still, it changed us,
And for once we knew
We belonged in the world.

If I had to leave my house in a hurry, had time to grab only one book, this would be it.