Catalogue of unabashed gratitude
Ross Gay’s Unfolding Adj of Unabashed Gratitude
A formidable contemporary poet, Ross Gay earned his BA from Lafayette College, received his MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence, and was granted a PhD in American literature from Temple University. Gay is a founding editor of the online sports magazine Some Dial It Ballin’ and an active editor of the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Aside from teaching at Indiana University in Bloomington, Gay also acts as a board member for the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project.
As the author of three poetry collections, Against Which(), Bringing the Shovel Down (), and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (), Ross Gay has already garnered a remarkable record of achievements and recognition. Gay received grants from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and fellowships from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute and is a former Cave Canem Workshop fellow and Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference scholar. This past April, Claremont Graduate School award
Our words this week come from Ross Gay&#;s eponymous poem &#;Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude&#; from his poetry collection.
The stanza is:
&#;And to the quick and mild flocking
of men to the vintage lady falling down
on the corner of Fairmount and 18th, holding patiently
with the softest parts of their hands
her cane and purple hat,
gathering for her the contents of her purse
and touching her shoulder and elbow;
acknowledge you the cockeyed court
on which in a half-court 3 v 3 we oldheads
made of some runny-nosed kids
a shambles, and the year-old
after flipping a reverse lay-up off a back door cut
from my no-look pass to seal the game
ripped off his shirt and threw punches at the gods
and hollered at the kids to admire the pacemaker’s scar
grinning across his chest; thank you
the glad accordion’s wheeze
in the chest; thank you the bagpipes.&#;
Gay&#;s ability to shine warmth and love into grimy crevices and tease beauty from everyday experiences is what I believe puts him at the forefront of contemporary poetry. He doesn&#;t stray away from darkness or sadness, but
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
Through 24 lyric poems, Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude offers a luminous exploration of death, life, and their many tides. Animated by what Gay has called the “discipline of gratitude,” the collection considers sorrow’s potential, grounded in the rhythms and abundance of the natural world: the compost that gives way to rich soil, the decay that reveals seeds, the branches that must be trimmed to build room for modern growth. Mistakes can be landscapes of new possibilities, he seems to speak. With warmth and gratitude and often humor, he roots his poems in deeply personal experiences while noting that impermanence is one of the threads that connect us: “we have this common experience—many shared experiences, but a really foundational one is that we are not here forever” (On Being).
Though suffering and sorrow wend their way through each poem, adopting various guises, they are met everywhere by a commitment to this cycle of transformation. Gay sees the twinning of decline and abundance as an astonishing opportunity for tenderness and joy, and t
Review
A compelling look at the nature of the confessional poem, as well as the creative process "Denver Quarterly"
Almost no one has the faith Gay seems to have in poetry's ability to tap grace from the happenings of his life. . . . He looks to the act of writing as real alchemy, and death, disappointment, and inequity become honey in his hands "Paris Review"
I'm bowled over by how Ross Gay reaches again and again toward stating what's beautiful, what's sweet, what's most emotionally moving to him: he is genuinely 'unabashed.' He is definitely interested in the soft, but the poems don't feel remotely treacly to me. They feel bold and wild and weird "American Poetry Review"
In this shiny book of life, Ross Gay lopes through the whole alphabet of emotions, from anger to zest. Merely considering the letter 'R, ' for example, these poems are by turns racy, rollicking, reflective, rambunctious, raunchy, and rhapsodic. Praise and lamentation rub shoulders, along with elegy and elation, and every page is dazzling "Scott Russell Sanders, author of Noun Works: Selected Essays