This is a book about desire and its relinquishment. Beginning with the question "How can I celebrate love, / now that I know what it does?" Gregory Orr's spare, elegant verse recasts one of the oldest tales of ideal, unattainable love.

Contents:

• The Entrance to the Underworld
  • When I first saw...
  • Is this what...
  • We've come...
  • In the Meadow...
  • In my dream...
  • A snake...
  • His Lament
  • Loss...
• If...
  • When I was alive...
  • She paused...
  • Orpheus Descending
  • I was moving...
  • When Eurydice saw him
  • Look, they descend
• Orpheus stood in the dark...
  • The Ghosts Listen to Orpheus Sing
  • My body was never marred
  • Because I sensed
  • It hurt me to hear...
  • When they said...
  • In the cave mouth...
  • Once the two of us
• It's winter...
  • In the shadows...
  • His Grief
  • Far below, plowed fields...
  • The Wedge
  • The Maenads
  • Warned his song...
  • By the Shore
  • His Dream: The Black Tree/Thirst
  • Tomb of Orpheus
• Fields took on...