Another way of saying "put it in the Book" would be that each poem we write pops up in the city of poetry, where anyone can visit it. Just as we visit the poems written before us. Go to Dickinson's house, or Li Po's or whomever we think has something to say to us that might help or be beautiful.
Gregory OrrI believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive.
Gregory OrrTo me, poetry is about survival first of all. Survival of the individual self, survival of the emotional life.
Gregory OrrWith "poets dead and gone" as Keats says in "Mermaid Tavern" they are alive and talking to us and us to them.
Gregory OrrNo one can threaten poetry. It's always been there, always will be. Humans need it to live: it has sustaining powers. How could we (anyone) get through adolescence without some form of song? Song is only a version of lyric poetry that is carried more by melody than by internal coherence and unity. but lyric and song - they are the same.
Gregory Orr