How lyric poetry transforms frauma; 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.

About the Author
Gregory Orr is a professor of English at the University of Virginia and poetry editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. He is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems, and has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.


Book Information
ISBN 9780820324289
Author Gregory Orr
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint University of Georgia Press
Publisher University of Georgia Press
Weight(grams) 357g