How Beautiful the Beloved - Gregory Orr

\n \n A] confident, mystical, expansive project.--Publishers Weekly\n \n 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\n \nMary 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\n \n...magnetic poems that open the world of lyrical verse to the larger questions of what is true and timeless. \n --The Bloomsbury Review\n \nGregory 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.\n \nIf to say it once \nAnd once only, then still \nTo say: Yes.\n \nAnd say it complete, \nSay it as if the word \nFilled the whole moment \nWith its absolute saying.\n \nLater for but, \nLater for if.\n \nNow \nOnly the single syllable \nThat is the beloved. \nThat is the world.\n \nGregory Orr is the author of ten books of poetry. He teaches at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville.\n