Gregory Orr: Poetry Is the Thread

Somehow something has gone wrong with poetry in our culture. We have lost touch with its purpose and value, and in doing so, we have lost contact with essential aspects of our own emotional and spiritual lives.

To me, poetry is about survival first of all. Survival of the individual self, survival of the emotional life.

Poetry is the thread that leads us out of the labyrinth of despair and into the light.

Whenever I read a poem that moves me, I know I'm not alone in the world. I feel a connection to the person who wrote it, knowing that he or she has gone through something similar to what I've experienced, or felt something like what I have felt. And their poem gives me hope and courage, because I know that they survived, that their life force was strong enough to turn experience into words and shape it into meaning and then bring it toward me to share.

― Gregory Orr