The Blessing, By Gregory Orr

From my list of old books that deserve new readers

Gregory Orr is an award-winning American poet whose words give shape to grief while simultaneously sharing a reverence for life. Martin Farawell once said of Orr’s poems: “If Bashō, Rumi, and Rilke could somehow have a child together, I imagine they would write poems something like these.”

It was his poems, of course, that drew me to his 2002 memoir, The Blessing. The story begins when Orr was twelve and shot his younger brother in a hunting accident, an event that his family never spoke about. Orr’s grief could not be shared with his father, a charming narcissist addicted to amphetamine and his own self-importance. But he longed to reach out to his mother, who was stoic and reserved. “I clung to the image of the two of us weeping in each others arms,” he wrote. “I didn’t want or hope for happiness, only some release, some sluicing away of all the accumulated grief.”

Two years after the hunting accident, his mother died suddenly after what should have been a minor operation. The funeral was held and her children were not invited, their grief turning inward like it had after the loss of their brother. At the age of eighteen, Orr worked as a civil rights volunteer in Mississippi, which led to him being kidnapped at gunpoint and held for a week in solitary confinement.

While The Blessing is marred with tragedy, Orr’s artful storytelling and the sense of meaning he found with poetry make it feel lighter — like a polite nod to the light and shade of life. Finishing the book felt like losing a dear friend.

Below is my favourite Gregory Orr poem, From Concerning the Book That Is the Body Of the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2005), shared with the author’s permission. The last two lines are tattooed on my arm — the placing is too conspicuous and the ink has bled, but I have no regrets.

To be alive: not just the carcass

But the spark

That’s crudely put, but…

If we’re not supposed to dance

Why all this music?