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Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved

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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

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.

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.

Orr's new collection is a timeless long poem that reads like wisdom literature and Eastern poetry, and will endure, as they have. This is one of the greatest (in the true sense of the word) poems of this decade, perhaps of the first half of this century. It speaks universally, as truly great poetry must; my father, at whom I've thrown countless poems with little reaction on his part, immediately ordered his own copy of this book after reading mine -- the first book of poetry he has ever owned.

Concerning is a book that speaks to the mind and to the heart. It has a doublefold language that both the mind and heart can understand. And in reading, I can hear my heart and mind connect. So odd, because they speak in different languages with only a few shared words and phrases. And I think my mind/brain attaches to Concerning through the written "language" on the page. The brain follows the words, syntax, presentation, logic of each of the poems. But the book is too large for the mind to hold it all. The mind starts swirling in all the subtleties of emotion and contraries within the emotions. The mind gets lost after awhile, but accepts.

The heart, however, embraces. It understands. It knows. It doesn't get lost. It knows from from the tone. It understands why each poem weeps and smiles at the same time, or is that the soul?

The book is full and full for the person reading it. The book explains poetry, why poetry, and what is poetry. How poetry is an inherent necessity/urge, how it is natural. How each poem tells the same story -- because each person feels grief, love, joy, and anguish -- but each person is unique with their greif, love, joy, and anguish, and so each poem is unique. But this book somehow embraces all the shared emotions we have and talks to all of us and we back to it naturally.

The only failing of this book is that not everyone will read it. If they did, I believe everyone would appreciate it and poetry, read more poetry, and know what poetry/life/death/living/loving are and are about.

I think this is the most important book of original poems written in the 2000s, and if not, it is for me.

This poet makes a passionate and convincing case that words, "the Book", is the way we and those we love are in fact immortal. "It's words that bring the beloved back," he tells us.

I commend Gregory Orr for writing - most of the time - in a simple, plain spoken, lovely language; and for writing a book that will comfort and inspire many who grieve over the death of a loved one. He feels his way along as though he were in the midst of heartbreak right in front of us, yet also speaks frequently in the second person "you", as though we were with him, sharing his experience, or he sharing ours. This makes for good company.

I would gently criticize Gregory Orr for some unnecessary complications, and for some lapses into banality and cliche. The title of the book, and the concept of the word-body-world-beloved, seem tortured to me. I think this cumbersome construction is avoidable and off-putting. It adds a component of pretentiousness to a naked, humble collection of poems.

As to the banality and cliches... we are each our own judge of those instances when a writer says something too obvious, and in an obvious way. Sometimes doing so is nevertheless fresh, and in a lot of cases, Orr's simple phrases ARE fresh (and spectacular). But sometimes, his lines seem to me shopworn and lazy, e.g: "Why should the grave be final? / Why should death be everything?/ Isn't the world wonderful?/ Don't we want more of it?/ And in poems, life goes on/forever."

I rated this book a 3, but truly this is just an average between a five and a 1. There is nothing average about this book, or "3-ish". It is a combination of the sublime and moving (5 star), with the banal and obvious. (1 star)