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Municipalities received more than $3 million in LSA grants

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‘Deliciously ambiguous’ play, ‘Doubt: A Parable,’ comes to King’s College

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; <em>&#8220;A father and his four sons run down a slope toward a deer they just killed.</em></p><p><em>The father and two sons carry rifles. They laugh, jostle and chatter together.</em></p><p><em>A gun goes off and the youngest brother falls to the ground.</em></p><p><em>A boy with a rifle stands beside him, screaming.&#8221;</em></p><p><em>***</em></p><p>About four years after that family tragedy, which took place in rural New York when Gregory Orr was 12, his high school librarian introduced him &#8220;to the possibility of writing poems.&#8221;</p><p>Poetry didn&#8217;t help him heal, he said in a telephone interview, because you never heal from something like that. Yet writing about his emotions made life &#8220;livable &#8212; and that&#8217;s even more important.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;It saved my life,&#8221; he said simply.</p><p>&#8220;Suddenly I felt this huge pressure that had been inside me, this huge agony and confusion that had been inside me since my brother&#8217;s death, diffuse,&#8221; said Orr, who had been the boy standing with the rifle and screaming as he realized he had just shot his younger brother.</p><p>&#8220;I realized you need to express what&#8217;s inside you, you need to tell your feelings. That&#8217;s what poetry&#8217;s for. That&#8217;s why we invented it. I went ahead and never stopped.&#8221;</p><p>More than half a century later Orr, 70, of Charlottesville, Va., is still writing &#8212; and teaching &#8212; poetry. Author of 10 books of poems and winner of a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, Orr will read excerpts from his work at 7:30 p.m. today <ins>Thursday, March 30 </ins> in the Burke Auditorium at King&#8217;s College. The public is welcome.</p><p>&#8220;I certainly hope more and more, as my life has gone on, I am a poet of joy,&#8221; Orr said. &#8220;My wife and I are married 45 years. We have two daughters and one grandchild. Talk about joy.&#8221;</p><p>But for a long time after his brother&#8217;s death, Orr said, life didn&#8217;t make sense.</p><p>&#8220;When I was 18, in 1965, I joined the civil rights movement and went down to Mississippi where a cotton strike was going on. Field workers, some as young as 7 or as old as 80, were making $4 a day. I went to help support the cotton strike,&#8221; he said.</p><p>He spent time in jail and was at one point kidnapped by armed vigilantes who held him in isolation for a week. He knew there was &#8220;a possibility I might be martyred for a noble cause,&#8221; and believed that might &#8220;redeem&#8221; him from the self-hatred he had felt since the day of the hunting accident.</p><p>Later, poetry became the path Orr followed to find meaning.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been writing seriously for more than 50 years,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This is what I want to do with my best energy and best intelligence. It is the best part of my life, outside of my family.&#8221;</p><p>When he began writing as a teen, he said, &#8220;I poured my agony and confusion and other emotions onto the page, but until you shape them, it&#8217;s not poetry.&#8221;</p><p><em>&#8220;Each night, I knelt on a marble slab and scrubbed at the blood. I scrubbed for years and still it was there. But tonight the bones in my feet begin to burn. I stand up and start walking, and the slab appears under my feet with each step, a white road only as long as your body &#8230;&#8221;</em></p><p>Orr is a master at shaping his poetry, and devotes every morning to it, seven days a week.</p><p>&#8220;From 8 a.m. to noon or 1 p.m. I belong totally to poetry, with my complete attention,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I sit there and drink coffee and mess around with words and fiddle with poems, dream about things. It&#8217;s a kind of discipline. My two enemies are interruptions and hunger.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Gregory Orr&#8217;s collection of poems &#8216;Gathering the Bones Together&#8217; includes a poem about the death of his brother in a hunting accident close to 60 years ago. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_orr.gatheringbig-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Gregory Orr&#8217;s collection of poems &#8216;Gathering the Bones Together&#8217; includes a poem about the death of his brother in a hunting accident close to 60 years ago. </caption0><photoCredit0>Submitted photo </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_orr.caged_.owl_.big_-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">In reviewing Gregory Orr&#8217;s book &#8216;The Caged Owl,&#8217; one reviewer says the poet&#8217;s &#8216;genius is the transformation of trauma into art.&#8217; </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_orr.caged_.owl_.big_-1.jpg</photo1><caption1>In reviewing Gregory Orr&#8217;s book &#8216;The Caged Owl,&#8217; one reviewer says the poet&#8217;s &#8216;genius is the transformation of trauma into art.&#8217; </caption1><photoCredit1>Submitted photo </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_orr.howbeautifulbig-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">&#8216;How Beautiful the Beloved&#8217; is one of 10 books of poetry Gregory Orr has authored. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_orr.howbeautifulbig-1.jpg</photo2><caption2>&#8216;How Beautiful the Beloved&#8217; is one of 10 books of poetry Gregory Orr has authored. </caption2><photoCredit2>Submitted photo </photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_orr.cityofsalt-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Part of the mystery of poetry, Orr says, is that different people find different meanings. To one reader, for example, the &#8216;city of salt&#8217; may be connected to tears. To another, it may not. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_orr.cityofsalt-1.jpg</photo3><caption3>Part of the mystery of poetry, Orr says, is that different people find different meanings. To one reader, for example, the &#8216;city of salt&#8217; may be connected to tears. To another, it may not. </caption3><photoCredit3>Submitted photo </photoCredit3></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_Orr-crop.jpg">
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<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Gregory Orrwill readfrom works</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p><strong>By Mary Therese Biebel</strong></p><p>mbiebel@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mary Therese Biebel at 570-991-6109 or on Twitter @BiebelMT</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Guggenheim Fellow Gregory Orr to read poetry excerpts at King’s College