Press for Dangerous Household Items:
“The writing is so fresh and delightful that Orr may forever change how readers view banal tasks and happenstances.”
—The Washington Post
“With his trademark drollery and endlessly perceptive wit, Orr explores the more sinister aspects of suburban life … It is an absolute treat to peer out at the world from Orr’s scrutinizing eyes, to reevaluate anything we might foolishly think of as familiar.”
—The Paris Review
“It’s obvious throughout that he knows what good poems do and, in a feat of dramatic irony, what they might.”
—Booklist
Press for You, Too, Could Write a Poem:
“Orr writes with generous reasonableness and accessibility. He’s also a gifted practitioner of similes . . . But most of all he possesses an apparent and infectious love for his subject, and his passionate expertise makes this book an elucidating joy.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“You, Too, Could Write A Poem is literary criticism at its best …throughout this engaging collection, he’s like the smart, provocative guy who is invited to every dinner party because he’s so insightful and often makes people laugh.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“This inspiring collection of reviews and essays on the pleasures of poetry . . . is a powerful example of why he is one of our sanest (and therefore most important) voices on this too-often-neglected art.”
—Library Journal
“Orr says the greatest compliment for any critic ‘is to say that you found yourself thinking of his writing the next time you encountered a good poem.’ He abundantly deserves that same praise.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Orr is an exceptional wit and critical talent, with perhaps his most brilliant feat here being how he dissolves some of poetry’s opacity and makes it more accessible (and interesting) to a wider audience.”
—Publishers Weekly
Press for The Road Not Taken
“David Orr has written the best popular explanation to date of the most popular poem in American history.”
“[David Orr’s] achievement in this shrewd and patient book lies in connecting Frost’s deceptively folksy manner with the very things that make him matter.”
The Road Not Taken is one of the 10 Best Books of August.
—The Christian Science Monitor
“Frost never minded being underestimated…he was perfectly happy to write things that would be taken for less than they were. This poem is a great example of that.”
“What Frost is doing pretty deliberately is trying to put several ideas in play and just let them collide and coincide and overlap, and if you look at it that way, I think the poem is hugely successful.”
“Orr is fascinated by why so many have read this poem so positively for so long, and what this fact reveals about the American soul.”
“There’s no company in the world that would put the poem up as part of their commercial if they knew what the poem is more likely to mean.”
“The most satisfying part of Orr’s fresh appraisal of “The Road Not Taken” is the reappraisal it can inspire in longtime Frost readers whose readings have frozen solid. The crossroads between the poet and the man is where Frost leaves his poems for us to discover, turning what seems like a fork in the road into a site of limitless potential, “in which all decisions are equally likely.”
“Frost’s beloved and misunderstood poem will never seem the same.”
“Orr writes that “The Road Not Taken” is “a thoroughly American poem. The ideas that [it] holds in tension — the notion of choice, the possibility of self-deception — are concepts that define . . . the United States.”
“Orr blends theory, biography, psychology, science, and a healthy dose of pop culture into a frothy mix so fun, readers may forget they’re learning something.”
—Publishers Weekly (pick of the week)
Press for Beautiful & Pointless
“One of the major misconceptions about poetry is the idea that it involves a kind of unhindered expression of one’s inner feelings.“
—Interview with Jonathan Bastian on Aspen Public Radio’s Page by Page
“As readers of poetry, the way that we think about the art form does relate to the way that we think about the love we bear for our family members and friends.”
—Conversation with Willard Spiegelman, Charles Douthat and Mark Oppenheimer
on Connecticut Public Broadcasting’s Paper Trails
“[Poetry] is an art form, and people like for it to be treated as an art form, and not as something that is essentially just a box of Kleenex.”
—Interview with Jim Fleming on NPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge
“Highbrow brilliant.”
—New York magazine’s Approval Matrix
“Well, actually, I came to poetry by mistake, as I think many people do.”
—Interview with Jane Clayson for NPR’s On Point
“If you imagine a Martian coming down and listening to OutKast, the Martian is going to be totally perplexed. Unless OutKast has more experience in outer space than I think they do.”
—Interview with Gregg LaGambina in The Onion A.V. Club
“It’s not so much that poems are confusing, it’s that we don’t really have any of the signals in the landscape that would let us know what’s going on. And so what the book is trying to do is provide a sense of the basic contours of the landscape of modern poetry.“
—Interview on WPR’s Veronica Reuckert Show
“I think a better way to approach the question ‘why bother?’ is not to answer it” but rather just to say that if you do bother, it can be worthwhile.”
—Interview with Linda Wertheimer on NPR’s All Things Considered
“It comes from writing for the Times, and the Times’ very large, very strange audience. That has made me especially sensitive to how, as a poetry critic, a lot of the things you say not only aren’t understood but aren’t understood almost in the way that you wouldn’t understand a Martian talking“
—Interview by Laura Miller at Salon.com
“Orr’s pronouncements on new poetry books are heard far and wide. In his debut, he talks to both poetry readers and poets, hoping to help them get along better, while also doing a bit of anthropology on the social world of contemporary poetry“
—Craig Morgan Teicher, ‘Poetry Profiled 2011’ at Publishers Weekly
“A good review is a persuasive judgment entertainingly delivered. Criticism itself is a broader category, and includes exploratory essays, polemics, advocacy, whither-the-poets-of-yesteryears and so forth. Poetry has plenty of critics, but fewer reviewers than it probably deserves.“
—Interview by Sina Queyras at Lemon Hound
“I stare intently at the screen, after having spent days reading some poor poet’s life work. Then I remember something I have to do elsewhere in the house/down the street/in a Home Depot/deep in a jungle on the Osa Peninsula. Finally, shortly before the piece is due, I return from wherever I’ve been and write the whole thing in a furious burst.“
—Interview by George Murray at Open Book Toronto