Monday, May 21 – Gregory Orr reading
7:30 p.m.
Atlantic Center for the Arts
1414 Art Center Ave.
New Smyrna Beach
386-427-6975
atlanticcenterforthearts.org
free
Much-decorated poet Gregory Orr (a Guggenheim fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Rockefeller Fellowship at the Institute for the Study of Culture and Violence) is concerned with the intersection of love and carnage, the moment in time where something irrevocable happens that causes your heart to crack. Orr’s memoir, The Blessing, spirals out from the terrible moment in which he accidentally shot and killed his brother while out hunting, tracing the ripple effects of that split-second event. His lyrical, lambent free verse concerns itself with “the beloved,” but don’t write it off as mere love poems: In his book Poetry as Survival, Orr posits that writing can “bring ordering powers to the chaos that surrounds us.” – Jessica Bryce Young
This article appears in May 16-22, 2012.
