In his sequel to Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved
(2005), Orr offers more short (many don't break 10 lines), earnest poems that take as their central metaphor “the beloved,†Orr's word for a conflation of a loved human being, the idea of a kind of higher power beyond the self at which love and energy are directed, and the poetry itself, which bears all this praise in what Orr calls “the Book.†The best of these poems are compact missives addressing in the most direct language possible many of humanity's most dire needs and fears: “That single line: a rope/ The poem tossed out/ Into the dark./... / You're holding one end; The beloved, the other.// Rescue is imminent.// Too soon to say whose.†Elsewhere, the language is so direct that it's more like journaling than poetry. Most perplexing and interesting, however, are many poems in which the language would
fall flat, except that Orr's line breaks add meaning and almost Rilkian power; imagine this going down the page: “...death is real, and all/ That is/ Flows toward its brink.// No wonder we need/ Hope and courage—// What the book brings.†(Apr.)
