Wnsg the Unwnsable: On Be Holdg by Ross Gay – Michigan Quarterly Review

Contents:

• ROSS GAY
• WNSG THE UNWNSABLE: ON BE HOLDG BY ROSS GAY
• ROSS GAY’S BE HOLDG
• ROSS GAY: INTERVIEW—BE HOLDG, GRATU, DELIGHTS
• BE HOLDG: WH ROSS GAY
• POET ROSS GAY EXPLOR A JOY RMED BY EP SORROW

ROSS GAY

Through a kd of lyric rearch, or lyric medatn, Ross Gay nnects Dr. And how that reachg might be somethg like & Reviews“The brilliant fourth book om Gay...

”— Publishers Weekly starred review“Ross Gay’s work is not only celebratory. ”—RHINO“In turng an stance of athletic prows and grace to an expansive metaphoric visn, Gay pulls off a syntactil tour force. ”—Baltimore Art“Gay’s poem theoriz an ethics that is pably polil, and s ebullient gratu, fore and aft, reads not jt as an overflow of thankfulns but as a ncrete practice of the ethics Gay suggts.

WNSG THE UNWNSABLE: ON BE HOLDG BY ROSS GAY

Ross Gay tak one fluid human gture and through expands the lungs of personal and munal history so they might hold all joy, terror, and vlence of this world. In this terrible era, Ross Gay has wrten a book that breath this broken world and then returns to so we might breathe too. Ross Gay has once aga proven himself one of our greatt poets.

Aga and aga, the betiful note he holds and hands, that’s what Ross Gay be sayg.

The brilliant fourth book om Gay... Ross Gay teach poetry at Indiana Universy and is the thor of the poetry llectns Agast Which, Brgg the Shovel Down, Lace and Pyre: Letters om Two Garns (wh Aimee Nezhumatathil), River (wh Rose Wehrenberg), Catalog of Unabashed Gratu, and the say llectn The Book of Delights.

ROSS GAY’S BE HOLDG

“Be Holdg” om the book Be Holdg, by Ross Gay, © 2020. ” In Be Holdg, a masterful, book-length poem wrten stream-of-nscns uplets, Ross Gay wants his rears to know that Juli Ervg – aka Doctor J – was one of those athlet.

Early on, Gay seems to be wrg an extend o to “The Doctor, ” but the poet tak advantage of Ervg’s super-human body ntrol and hang-time while fishg The Lay-Up (hoops’ fans love the signatns: Michael Jordan gave The Shot; LeBron gave The Block) – a tly amazg move durg the 1980 playoffs that would have ma Isaac Newton doubt the ratnal laws of the universe – to ntextualize Ervg’s greatns. So do Gay.

Wrers n also transcend the laws of time and space, and regnizg that “nothg happens/only when happens” Gay is quick and keen to make nnectns between his prent obssns, such as this YouTube basketball footage and the past – the historil past (noddg obliquely to the profound ristance of the Flyg Igbo), to sharecropper anctors and, ultimately, to his parents. One of the great pleasur of this book is hearg how effortlsly Gay jumps om register to register. Gay also sails so smoothly om one subject to another, this sgle-sentence saga, that you e to believe all the stori (and lns more) were right there all along.

ROSS GAY: INTERVIEW—BE HOLDG, GRATU, DELIGHTS

J’s opponents, Jamaal Wilk, Gay jumps om Wilk’ nickname –“Silk” — to his own basketball playg days:.

Bee the nam of the victims were whheld om the tle and ptn of the photo, Gay whholds the name of the photographer here who “unlovgly” held a mera “behd which/ was a man/ a buildg across the way/ a wdow/he found open to the horror/who would w a Pulzer Prize for spot photography/for shootg the woman/and the ltle girl/pturg her/starg at /starg at her ath. Gay’s load language here dicts the photographer for his plicy watchg the stctn of the bodi, for atheticizg this horrific vlence.

BE HOLDG: WH ROSS GAY

Later, Gay watch watchers a “mm of black pa”: “mostly whe stunts” and “their whe teacher” who are mostly not noticg:. Here Gay also wars wh himself sce he knows that by relatg the scen of vlence and disregard he, too, has bee a sort of “docent/ the mm of black pa.

Yet, what of Gay’s own eply sympathetic and accatory readg of that photo? We rears are watchg Gay watchg a vio clip as he curat a personal mm exhib that is part memoir and part historil monument. That’s what is so imprsive here: Gay’s l have such propulsn as we watch his generative md flight.

POET ROSS GAY EXPLOR A JOY RMED BY EP SORROW

” And here, the poem is acpanied by another photograph, that of a grandmother standg proudly a doorway wh her son (also un-named), a young boy wh flight goggl on his head, whom Gay fers is also dreamg of flight. The doorway that photo serv as another portal through which Gay’s thoughts fly: to his great grandfather, a sharecropper, whose body was “loot, and his life, loot, / his life was theirs, / like the crop, / like the land, / they uld be/ thrown overboard/ for the surance”.

Ultimately, this book is a poem of gratu – of all the people to whom Gay is beholn.

And Gay’s gratu is evint throughout (this book may also feature the longt “Acknowledgements” sectn any book of poems I have ever read).