WORK — ROSS GAY

Contents:

• POET ROSS GAY ON THE BODY AS AN INSTMENT OF THOUGHT AND THE DELIGHTS OF WRG BY HAND
• HOW ROSS GAY FDS JOY IN THE SMALLT OF 'DELIGHTS'
• THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS: POET AND GARNER ROSS GAY’S YEARLONG EXPERIMENT WILLFUL GLADNS
• ROSS GAY: FDG JOY THE PROCS
• ROSS GAY

POET ROSS GAY ON THE BODY AS AN INSTMENT OF THOUGHT AND THE DELIGHTS OF WRG BY HAND

This sgular terplay between the manual and the mental, between the mechanics and the magic of wrg, is what Ross Gay — another poet wh a playful spir and an expansive md, whom Sacks would have gleefully beiend — nsirs a passage om his immeasurably lightful Book of Delights (public library) — one of the most satisfyg books of 2019. Ross Gay. Havg wrten his “sayett” on light by hand, Gay reflects on the “surprisg and utter light” of this mo of posn — a urageoly untercultural light, I mt add as my own fgertips prs to the ld plastic wh the bld fah that an visible wizardry of on, zero, and silin will translate motn to meang.

Gay wr:. Today, we're stg down wh the wrer Ross Gay. So many thgs light Ross Gay: handma fy srv and loerg, the joy of rryg a heavy bag between two people, paw paws and even weeds.

HOW ROSS GAY FDS JOY IN THE SMALLT OF 'DELIGHTS'

This summer, I reread yet aga and found myself medatg on a sire Gay had voiced: wantg to be softer a world so ready to sharpen and to make hard. So, a recent terview, I talked to Gay about that sire, as well as the role of joy daily life, the difficulty of allowg yourself to be moved, and why he thks 's important to e the word "love.

Ross Gay was born Youngstown, Oh. Gay is the -thor, wh Aimee Nezhumatathil, of the chapbook Lace and Pyre: Letters om Two Garns (2014), and wh Richard Wehrenberg, Jr., River (2014). And that is what poet Ross Gay do ll them as he picks up, a century and a civilizatnal failure later, where Hse left off wh The Book of Delights (public library) — his yearlong experiment learng to notice, amid a world that so readily giv reasons to spair, the daily wellsprgs of light, or what Wenll Berry, his geo se for light as a untercultural force of ristance, lled the elemental pleasur “to which a man had to be acutely and tritely attentive, or he uld not have them at all.

THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS: POET AND GARNER ROSS GAY’S YEARLONG EXPERIMENT WILLFUL GLADNS

Ross Gay his beloved muny garn. Each day, begng on his forty-send birthday and endg on his forty-third, Gay posed one miature say — “sayett, ” he lls them, that lovely poet’s way of leaveng meang wh makhift language — about a particular light enuntered that day, swirled around his nscns to extract s maximum sweetns.

ROSS GAY: FDG JOY THE PROCS

And so we learn, as passengers on Gay’s lightcraft, that is not jt a matter of payg attentn, but of takg attentn, of liberately shiftg , of divertg the glygen that pumps our spair mcle and clench the fist snng for danger, for that selfsame glygen is need to pump our light mcle and open the palm to hold joy.

To be sure, this pacy for drkg the glor everythgns of the world is rooted regnizg the immense and improbable elemental light of one’s own existence — the nsequence of what Gay lls “the many thoand — ln! (Gay is as much a poet as he is a voted garner, though perhaps as Ey Dickson well knew, the two are but a sgle occupatn.

Perhaps the most charmg tegory of lights Gay enunters throughout the year are what he terms “unequivolly pleasant public physil teractns wh strangers.

ROSS GAY

In an early-tumn sayette, drawg on Zadie Smh’s elegant reflectns on joy, and on Rilke, and on Edmund Burke and the Romantics, Gay offers the darg theory that joy is “not a feelg or an acplishment: ’s an enterg and a jog wh the terrible.

Jon’s spellbdg Universe Verse performance of one of Ross Gay’s poems. Ross Gay spent a year wrg daily says about thgs that light him. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks wh Gay about some of the says clud his new book, The Book of Delights.