The World Seems... by Gregory Orr

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 14, 2014   The World Seems…   Gregory Orr

The world seems so palpable And dense: people and things And the landscapes They inhabit or move through.   Words, on the other hand, Are so abstract—they’re Made of empty air Or black scratches on a page That urge us to utter Certain sounds.                            And us: Poised in the middle, aware Of the objects out there Waiting patiently to be named, As if the right words Could save them.                                And don’t They deserve it?      So much hidden inside each one, Such a longing To become the beloved.   And inside us: the sounds That could extend that blessing— How they crowd our mouths, How they press up against Our lips, which are such A narrow exit for a joy so desperate.                Copyright © 2014 by Gregory Orr. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “This poem is part of a sequence of lyric meditations entitled The Word and the World. I’m fascinated by the spark and arc of connection between us and the world that words enact—meaning-making at its most intense, which is lyric poetry. What Emily Dickinson endorses as the poet’s ‘Audacity of Bliss,’ what Martin Buber urges as the spasmodic but sustaining power to turn the ‘it’ of things into the ‘thou’ of the beloved.” —Gregory Orr   Gregory Orr’s most recent collection of poems is River Inside the River (W. W. Norton, 2013). He teaches at the University of Virginia, where he founded the MFA program in writing in 1975. Most Recent Book by Orr   River Inside the River (W. W. Norton, 2013) "Having Words" by Alfred Corn "Onomatomania" by Thomas Lux "The Composition of the Text" by Adriano Spatola Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit poets.org   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038