We Interrupt This Broadcast: Poems - Gregory Orr

nFrom 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.n nThe 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.n nSet 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.n nFrom So often there's a disconnect . . .n n So often there's a disconnect: n You know the world n Is ending and you eat your soup. n n I'm weeding in my garden n As a flash flood warning n Comes my way, complete with siren. n The sky's gray, but nothing else n Indicates so dire a situation. n