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The blessing : a memoir / Gregory Orr.
Van Pelt Library PS3565.R7 Z46 2002
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Orr, Gregory.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Orr, Gregory--Childhood and youth.
- Orr, Gregory.
- Orr, Gregory--Family.
- Poets, American--20th century--Biography.
- Poets, American.
- Families.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Autobiographies.
- Physical Description:
- xi, 209 pages ; 23 cm
- Edition:
- First edition.
- Place of Publication:
- San Francisco : Council Oak Books, [2002]
- Summary:
- The blood that would first stain Orr's childhood was spilled the year he was twelve. In that autumn, Gregory Orr shot his brother to death in a hunting accident. In this spare and poignant memoir, he tells how this horrific event shaped his life. Against backdrops of the rural Hudson Valley, a remote charity hospital in the jungles of Haiti, and the Deep South of the civil rights era where he marched and bled with other youthful demonstrators, Orr articulates his journey in language as sharp-edged and authentic as the experiences themselves.
- At his brother's funeral he saw "... that death was with us. It was the small white snail of wadded Kleenex my mother kept pressing against her face; it was nibbling holes in her cheek as if it were a leaf." No comfort would come from Orr's beloved though distant mother or his father, a quixotic country doctor addicted to amphetamines. He would have to make sense of life's inchoate forces on his own. Eventually, his experiences would lead him to an unexpected epiphany and a clear answer to one of life's basic questions: How do we find meaning in the face of death?
- Contents:
- Blessing 3
- Guns 5
- The Accident 9
- Meanings 19
- Child Mind 23
- Numb 25
- The Field 27
- Cain Continuing 28
- Alcove 33
- Renssalaerville 42
- Germantown 47
- The Ditch 52
- House Calls 55
- Bottles 58
- New Heights 63
- The Chiron 67
- After 75
- Returning 77
- A Dream 80
- The Old House 81
- Visitors 89
- Plans 94
- Haiti 99
- My Mother's Letters 106
- The Paths 108
- Voodun 111
- Last Letter 114
- The Operation 117
- Leaving 120
- The Green Bird 122
- Back to Germantown 127
- Inga 130
- School 133
- The Maidens of Hades 137
- The Thread of Poetry 141
- The Excursion 146
- College 154
- Aftermath 161
- Mississippi 166
- Jackson 170
- After the Long Day 180
- Hayneville 188
- Safe and Sound 199
- The Other Field 205.
- ISBN:
- 1571781110
- OCLC:
- 50564804
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