Poetry as Survival

by
Gregory Orr
Published in 2002
by University of Georgia Press

Poet and professor Gregory Orr offers an in-depth analysis and meditation on the time-tested ways in which reading, writing, and listening to lyric poetry can be instrumental in processing, healing, and transcending trauma and suffering. Orr selects examples and anecdotes from ancient Chinese, Egyptian, Inuit, and Japanese cultures, and brings in the work of poets—such as Emily Dickinson, Stanley Kunitz, D. H. Lawrence, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, and Richard Wilbur—to demonstrate the transformative power of the form.