We Interrupt This Broadcast

From a master lyric poet characterized by Mary Oliver as “a Walt Whitman without an inch of Whitman’s bunting and oratory” comes this late-life collection that takes its overall title from the venerable phrase that alerted listeners and viewers to an urgent event of public significance. Again and again, the poems in We Interrupt This Broadcast dramatize, in simple and deep language, what it feels like to be alive in our time. The disconnects that haunt and animate these poems are political, ecological, and psychological. Some, like “Un-Earth: A Sequence,” revisit early trauma experienced both intimately and socially, while others contemplate our present ecological crises. Set against this somber background of disconnects, Gregory Orr invokes the natural world and human intimacy as sources of growth and hope. Giving voice to both personal and universal anguish, We Interrupt This Broadcast repeatedly transforms desolation into celebration, silence and suffering into song. From “So often there’s a disconnect . . .” So often there’s a disconnect: You know the world Is ending and you eat your soup. I’m weeding in my garden As a flash flood warning Comes my way, complete with siren. The sky’s gray, but nothing else Indicates so dire a situation.

About the Author :
Gregory Orr is the author of fourteen collections of poetry and several books of prose, including The Blessings: A Memoir, A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry, and Poetry as Survival. He is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, where he founded its MFA Program in Writing. He lives with his wife, the painter Trisha Orr, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Review :
"Gregory Orr’s We Interrupt This Broadcast is a starkly contemplative nod to time’s incessant habit of passing while sparking wonder and inflicting wound along the way. Only someone who doesn’t ‘have to stand tip-toe / To see over the final edge’ can know scar so intimately—scars left by childhood terror, a restless want for justice, or the viral shutting down of the world. Stamping these words with his singular signature, Orr does what he has always done so well—manifest the power of poetry to seek out damage and the power to scar it to silence." "Clear-eyed, prophetic, and meditative, Gregory Orr’s new poems are profound lyrical lessons in staying alive despite chaos and cruelty. Elegiac and tender, this book captures a life spent dedicated to poetry’s grace. A beautiful offering." "Gregory Orr is one of the most essential, graceful poets writing anywhere in the world today. I truly believe his poems have saved many lives, including mine."