| Author | Message | ||
| Jim Doss
Senior Member Username: jimdoss Post Number: 1969 Registered: 12-2003 |
I'd like to share a statement of beliefs with from you from an old college professor whom I greatly admire as a person and a poet. He recorded a segment on the NPR program "This I Believe," which can be heard at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5221496 I've also included the text of his statement----- I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive. When I was 12 years old, I was responsible for the death of my younger brother in a hunting accident. I held the rifle that killed him. In a single moment, my world changed forever. I felt grief, terror, shame and despair more deeply than I could ever have imagined. In the aftermath, no one in my shattered family could speak to me about my brother's death, and their silence left me alone with all my agonizing emotions. And under those emotions, something even more terrible: a knowledge that all the easy meanings I had lived by until then had been suddenly and utterly abolished. One consequence of traumatic violence is that it isolates its victims. It can cut us off from other people, cutting us off from their own emotional lives until we go numb and move through the world as if only half alive. As a young person, I found something to set against my growing sense of isolation and numbness: the making of poems. When I write a poem, I process experience. I take what's inside me -- the raw, chaotic material of feeling or memory -- and translate it into words and then shape those words into the rhythmical language we call a poem. This process brings me a kind of wild joy. Before I was powerless and passive in the face of my confusion, but now I am active: the powerful shaper of my experience. I am transforming it into a lucid meaning. Because poems are meanings, even the saddest poem I write is proof that I want to survive. And therefore it represents an affirmation of life in all its complexities and contradictions. An additional miracle comes to me as the maker of poems: Because poems can be shared between poet and audience, they also become a further triumph over human isolation. Whenever I read a poem that moves me, I know I'm not alone in the world. I feel a connection to the person who wrote it, knowing that he or she has gone through something similar to what I've experienced, or felt something like what I have felt. And their poem gives me hope and courage, because I know that they survived, that their life force was strong enough to turn experience into words and shape it into meaning and then bring it toward me to share. The gift of their poem enters deeply into me and helps me live and believe in living. -- Gregory Orr My books are available at http://www.lulu.com/jimdoss. Co-Editor Loch Raven Review: http://www.lochravenreview.net. Read the latest Trakl translations at http://www.literaturnische.de/Trakl/english/index-trakl-e.htm. | ||
| ~M~
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 6674 Registered: 11-1998 |
Thank you so much for posting this, Jim. Reading it was revelatory. Just as Mr. Orr talks about feeling a connection to the author when he reads a poem that moves him, I felt myself connecting to Mr. Orr through his statements. Though I have never been responsible for someone's death as he was, I do know the isolation and grief one feels in the face of trauma. I derived much comfort from his words. | ||
| Jim Doss
Senior Member Username: jimdoss Post Number: 1976 Registered: 12-2003 |
M, Thanks for reading and commenting. If you ever get a chance to read Orr's work, it is most interesting how he deals with this tragedy artistically from his first book to some of his later books. Jim My books are available at http://www.lulu.com/jimdoss. Co-Editor Loch Raven Review: http://www.lochravenreview.net. Read the latest Trakl translations at http://www.literaturnische.de/Trakl/english/index-trakl-e.htm. | ||
| Kathy Paupore
Senior Member Username: kathy Post Number: 3056 Registered: 12-2003 |
Jim, I have "The Caged Owl." I admire his work. Thanks for sharing. How awesome to have had him as a teacher!  K | ||
| Jim Doss
Senior Member Username: jimdoss Post Number: 2005 Registered: 12-2003 |
Kathy, You should check out his new book: Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved. A departure from some of his older work. Jim  (Message edited by jimdoss on March 05, 2006) My Books Loch Raven Review Editor Trakl Translations | ||
| Kathy Paupore
Senior Member Username: kathy Post Number: 3070 Registered: 12-2003 |
Jim, Thanks, I'll add it to my wish list! K | ||
| Morgan Lafay
Advanced Member Username: morganlafay Post Number: 1603 Registered: 08-2005 |
Jim, I just saw this, so glad I did. I can really relate to Mr. Orr's "This I Believe"...just reading his text statement explained to me a lot about my own feelings and why I'm putting them down and "out there." At times I feel a bit exposed, but at the same time, I'm turning the past into survival for myself. (I think I know what I mean!!??!) Thanks so much for sharing this. Morgan | ||
| ~M~
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 6807 Registered: 11-1998 |
Thanks, Jim. I'll be sure to add this to the WPF BookShop since it comes with your stamp of approval! Love, M |
