The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write: Poems

by Gregory Orr

Overview

A “master of the lyric poem” (Paris Review) at the top of his form writes indelibly of grief and love.

In this moving, playful, and deeply philosophical volume, acclaimed poet Gregory Orr returns with a passionate exploration of the forces that shape us. Slipping effortlessly from personal trauma (“Song of What Happens”) to public catastrophe (“Charlottesville Elegy”), Orr seeks innovative ways for the imagination to respond to and create meaning out of painful experiences, while at the same time rejoicing in love and language. The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write confirms Orr’s place among the preeminent lyric poets of his generation, engaging the deepest existential issues with wisdom and humor and transforming them into celebratory song.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393541373
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/23/2021
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	635,244
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Gregory Orr has written twelve poetry collections, a memoir, and several books of criticism, most recently A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry. The recipient of Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Table of Contents

And So 13

Song of What Happens 15

No use closing… 18

Dark Song 19

Song of Aftermath-"Standing, now…" 21

Ode to Nothing 22

Reading Dickinson 37

Lines Standing in for Religious Conviction 38

Ode to Some Lyric Poets 39

Ode to Words 52

Song of Lyric Geography 58

You sat alone in a room… 61

There are questions… 62

The Undertoad 63

Trying hard just to listen… 64

Aftermath Sonnet-"Letting my tongue sleepy…" 65

How often I've wished… 66

It's narrow… 67

Aftermath Inventory-"Shattered?…" 68

For Trisha 69

We were that joke… 72

Ode to the Country of Us… 73

Sitting at a dinner table… 83

The Ferris Wheel at the World's Fair 85

Dark Proverbs for Dark Times 86

I Don't Really Care, Do You? 90

Charlottesville Elegy 92

Hector Bidding Wife and Child a Last Good-bye 95

Downtown Tour 96

Lyric Revises the World 98

Ode to These Socks 100

Coleridge and Me 105

Emily Dickinson Test-Drives the First Home Sewing Machine 107

Into a thousand pieces? 109

Some phrases move… 110

Ode to Left-Handedness 111

Certain poems offer me… 113

For weeks now… 114

Still Life 116

For My Daughters 117

For My Mother 118

The last love poem I will ever write… 120

Young, I took it all so… 121

Secret Constellation 122

Inscription 124

It's time… 126

Acknowledgments 127

Editorial Reviews

"Orr is able to alter our perception of the material world with the simplest words."

Adroit Journal - Michael Dhyne

"Engrossing… achingly honest."

Washington Post

"Sharp, memorable, and immensely lyrical.… This book is proof that Gregory Orr belongs in that pantheon [of renowned writers], offering an exceptional, stirring, and certain voice in our own uncertain world."

Rain Taxi Review - Mandana Chaffa

"Verse of astonishing verbal clarity—no polysyllabic scientific and philosophical trade vocabulary for Orr—and virtually invisible but adamantine technique.… This is the work of one of our best poets."

Booklist

"The crystalized, perfectly-clear articulations of grief that begin the collection ring through it, though, making it impossible to read even the simplest lyric in The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write as light."

Ploughshares - Katie Berta

06/24/2019

At first plainspoken and clever, Orr (River Inside the River) pushes conceits until they are revelatory in this deceptively simple book. These are mostly short poems with a handful of several-page odes (to “Nothing,” “Some Lyric Poets,” “the Country of Us,” and “Left-Handedness”) in which Orr works through issues of belief (even as he declares he is “done with God”), love (even as he declares through the title poem that he’s written the last one on that subject), and trauma (even as he spells out that the coincidence of “Two boys, my father and I// Barely in their teens,/ Killing two others they loved/ By accident” isn’t “credible”). In “Ode to Nothing,” Orr plays with the word nothing: “Nothing is the secret force/ At the heart of it all” and “The wisest among us/Always believed in/ Nothing,” until it becomes a comforting entity. The gruffness rife in these poems gives way to love, which entered when Orr was “broken/ All the way to the center.” In this collection, he offers silence and language as a way to heal. (June)

Publishers Weekly