These days it seems the lyric impulse, so seemingly fragile, comes in for a lot of abuse-or simply a lot of mistrust. What's it for, anyway, in this hard-edged, worried world? Into this cultural uncertainty Gregory Orr's spirited meditation on the surprisingly tensile strength of poetry in the face of profound suffering and grief presents a welcome fresh view of the ancient human instinct to cry out and to praise.

We store in memory only images of value. The value may be lost over the passage of time, but that's the implacable judgment of feeling.

Planes are my foxhole. I'm always on my knees in them.

I could tell you stories-if only stories could tell what I have in me to tell.

Silence, that inspired dealer, takes the day's deck, the life, all in a crazy heap, lays it out, and plays its flawless hand of solitaire, every card in place. Scoops them up, and does it all over again.

True memoir is written, like all literature, in an attempt to find not only a self but a world

Silence was the first prayer I learned to trust.