The Blessing: A Memoir

Critically acclaimed poet Gregory Orr's memoir of his tragic boyhood and ultimate redemption.

Filled with the spare and moving language that marks Gregory Orr's most affecting poems, The Blessing explores themes of personal tragedy and atonement, trauma and reconciliation. Orr's ability to give voice to the feelings that are hardest to put into words makes his story unforgettable, mesmerizing reading.

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?

"Orr's gripping chronicle of his troubled boyhood is alternately self-conscious, moving and revelatory....One can only wonder what the next installment of Orr's life will look like on paper, for this one never fails to entertain, mystify and surprise." Publishers Weekly

"The inadvertent shooting death of his brother by poet Orr gives this memoir a godawful specific gravity and spurs the author's search for ways to live on....Here, the old and new meanings of 'blessing' — to sprinkle with blood, to confer spiritual power — harrowingly collide." Kirkus Reviews

"Orr has distilled the anguish of his youth right down to its holy bones in a breathtaking chronicle....In each poemlike chapter, tension, sorrow, and darkness give way to the mystical beauty of metaphor..." Donna Seaman, Booklist

"An astounding memoir saturated with themes of death, shame, and guilt....Orr's psychological and emotional honesty is moving....Well researched and fluidly written, this work may prove difficult for the casual reader but is essential for all academic collections. The Blessing is highly recommended..." Library Journal

"Orr's personal history is gothic in its grotesque, desolate dramatics....Orr balances lyric grace with careful restraint to produce a convincing memoir about facing down despair....Wounded, sprinkled with blood, Orr manages to confer spiritual power upon his readers by finding meaning in what most of us could not bear to endure." The San Francisco Chronicle

"Great poetry salves the heart, great poets show us how to survive what would otherwise destroy us. In The Blessing, Gregory Orr takes us back to the moment in which his life was cracked open when, at twelve, he shot and killed his younger brother. He asks the survivor's heartbreaking question, 'Why him and not me?' To find the answer, he opens his whole life to us...but what Greg has done is more than just tell his story. He has given us the making of a poet, showing us how he survived what would otherwise have destroyed him. It is a blessing for us all." Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina

"Here is so very much of life's pain, but also its possibilities — here is melancholy become the fuel of searching, persisting idealism..." Robert Coles, author of The Spiritual Life of Children

"Even a chaotic and hapless family, it seems, can confer a blessing — the strength to live in the world as it is, and the wisdom to love people as they are. The book is not about surviving pain so much as developing a writer's instinct for transforming it..." Kathleen Norris, author of Dakota and The Cloister Walk

"Gregory Orr reminds us that one of the archaic meanings of 'to bless' is 'to sprinkle with blood.' This is a portrait of a blood-drenched childhood and the resulting search for the strength to make a life in the face of isolating sorrow, guilt, and grief — those private realms of darkness that might remain impenetrable were it not for the power of love and art to lift us." Mark Doty, author of Firebird and Heaven's Coast

Filled with the spare and poignant language that marks Gregory Orr's most affecting poems, The Blessing explores powerful themes of personal tragedy and atonement, trauma and reconciliation. Orr's ability to give voice to the feelings that are hardest to put into words makes his story unforgettable, mesmerizing reading.

The Blessing begins with the horrific event that has permeated Orr's life and writing: At the age of twelve, he accidentally shot and killed his younger brother Peter. Haunted by his painful, Cain-like legacy, the young Orr seemed to be followed by further violence throughout his adolescence. His shattering experiences lead to an unexpected epiphany and a clear answer to one of life's most basic questions: How do we find meaning in the face of death? — and his life as a poet begins.

The poignant, unforgettable story of a life marred by profound tragedy and redeemed through the healing power of poetry and art.

Gregory Orr is the critically acclaimed author of eight volumes of poetry, including The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems, and Poetry as Survival, a book about healing trauma through poetry. Orr teaches at the University of Virginia and edits poetry for the Virginia Quarterly Review. He has published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He has been a Rockefeller Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Violence, and is also a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts and Gugenheim Fellowships. Orr lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife and two daughters.

Part 1
Blessing 3
Guns 5
The Accident 9
Meanings 19
Child Mind 23
Numb 25
The Field 27
Cain Continuing 28
Part 2
Alcove 33
Renssalaerville 42
Germantown 47
The Ditch 52
House Calls 55
Bottles 58
Books 60
New Heights 63
The Chiron 67
Part 3
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
Part 4
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