Poetry as survival
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
Criticism, interpretation, etc
1 online resource (vii, 235 pages)
9780820340111, 9781283031271, 9786613031273, 0820340111, 1283031272, 6613031275
707925462
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Everywhere and Always
Part One: The Self, Jeopardy, and Song
1 Poised on a Mountain Peak, Floating on the Ocean
2 The Dinner Party and the Sailor At War
3 The Embodied Self
4 The Edge As Threshold
5 Bags Full of Havoc
6 The Two Survivals
7 The Powers of Poetry
Part Two: Trauma and Transformation
8 The Dangerous Angel
9 Convulsive Transformation of the Overculture
10 Wordsworth and the Permanent Forms
11 Keats and the Ardor of the Pursuer
12 Whitman and the Habit of Dazzle
13 Dickinson and the Brain S Haunted Corridors
14 Wilfred Owen and the Horrors of War
15 The Quest and the Dangerous Path
16 Constellations and Medicine Pouches
Appendix A: Sacred and Secular Lyric
Appendix B: The Social Lyric and the Personal Lyric
Appendix C: Incarnating Eros
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Includes index
English