by Gregory Orr
Copper Canyon Press 2009
Reviewed by Jason Bredle

“Crammed with astute observations about anatomy in action!”

Gregory Orr follows 2005’s Concerning the Book that Is the Body of the Beloved with this collection, How Beautiful the Beloved, a further examination of the beloved in the abstract. This expansive project reveals quite a lot of wisdom about the idea of the beloved – be it man, woman, pet, inanimate object, anything loved by someone – and its relationship to us as human beings. In that regard, it frequently hits the core of the human experience – and more specifically, the heart. When successful, the result can be transcendent – an idea seemingly too simple on the surface will reveal itself as intricately nuanced, and Orr’s ability to convey complexities with just a few words is not only evocative, for me, of some of the Asian poetry I’ve read, but also speaks to his greatest strength as a poet. The grandness of the product as a whole, however, is also its shortcoming – I left the book wondering how many poems about an abstract idea are too many and whether they begin to lose their lyrical power when the only tangible things are those happening around the subject rather than the subject itself. Of course, I feel the same way about church, so perhaps this is my own shortcoming as a human being.

Letting go, when all you want is to hold.
Turning away, when all you want is to stay.

Almost all that’s in the Book was written
On just such a day:

Someone remaining;
someone going away

Someone becoming silent;
someone who must say.

The above lines, perhaps some of the most persuasive in the book, act as a descriptor of what lies behind the poems in this collection. True, the subject of each poem is no doubt the oblique beloved, but the story between the speaker and the beloved, even humans and the beloved, is what make the poems superb. The joy of the beloved is what drives the speaker, but the heartbreak, confusion, sadness, and loss surrounding the beloved is the real story of the poems.

Human heart –
That tender engine.

Love revs it;
Loss stalls it.

What can make it
Go again?

The poem, the poem.

The book is always checked out of the library, the speaker proclaims, so better to create “Your own version:/ The poems and songs/ You love – the ones/ That saved you when/ You were young/ And suffered./ And also/ Those that consoled you/ When you were older.”

Really, I couldn’t praise the lyricism and wisdom of these poems enough. Orr has really mastered the lyric – I think the above examples are proof enough. However, the beloved is so present that the story around the beloved – joy, love, suffering, misery, salvation –also feels like a shortcoming to me, at times so hyperbolic that the words themselves seem meaningless:

How we embraced the beloved
So tightly that fate itself
Was changed into destiny

Then everything was different.

Exactly as before, but also
Different.
Death still there,
But different.
Loss still
Omnipresent, but not the same.

Held in our arms, holding us
Even as she vanished,
Even as he turned into song.

This poem feels like a lesson in the importance of the “show, don’t tell” rule. Just a few times I wished for something strikingly tangible to enter – a name, an object. What exactly does the first stanza mean? Should I debate with myself about whether it should appear on a greeting card? Have greeting cards, with their abstract, flowery language, ruined poetry? Should I have surrounded myself with dream catchers before reading it? Interestingly, I found the most tangible moments in Orr’s poems come when reflecting upon other poems:

Nazim Hikmet begins a poem
With the phrase, “Another thing
I didn’t know I loved.”
He writes in a tone of amazement.

He’s a Turkish poet in exile.
He’s on a train in winter,
Leaving Prague and headed
Toward an uncertain future.
The poem he’s writing is a list
Of things he suddenly knows
Are precious.
He doesn’t know
Where he’s going – old man
At the start of a long, cold ride.
The list he recites is also long.

As long as he keeps making that list,
He’s traveling toward the beloved.

This poem certainly stands out in the collection. It’s one of the few with specific names, places, and images. It makes me want to read Nazim Hikmet (though I read this particular poem and Orr’s poem is better). It makes me want to realize I love so many things I didn’t know I loved until this moment and it makes me want to list those things. The poem is a wonderful example of one of the most important messages of the book, yet also describes a poem in such a way that it seems the exact opposite of the poems in this book. Perhaps that’s the point, and perhaps this is why Orr is often compared to Whitman. “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself” In that respect, even what I propose as a potential shortcoming could be a reflection of the complexity of human thought and the dichotomies in which we live every day. The things that move us do not do so with simplicity, but perhaps if we’re able to express those things with simplicity, we’ve started down the path of artistic mastery.

Sometimes the poem
Changes you slowly
As if eroding the old life.

You have to be patient
With the way it unfolds –
One line at a time.

So unlike the beloved:
All at once and forever.

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