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Contents:
- ROSS GAY’S UNFOLDG UNRSTANDG OF UNABASHED GRATU
- ROSS GAY: INTERVIEW—BE HOLDG, GRATU, DELIGHTS
- ROSS GAY’S UNABASHED GRATU
ROSS GAY’S UNFOLDG UNRSTANDG OF UNABASHED GRATU
A formidable ntemporary poet, Ross Gay earned his BA om Lafayette College, received his MFA poetry at Sarah Lawrence, and was granted a PhD Amerin lerature om Temple Universy. Gay is a foundg edor of the onle sports magaze Some Call It Ball’ and an active edor of the chapbook prs Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Prs. Asi om teachg at Indiana Universy Bloomgton, Gay also acts as a board member for the Bloomgton Communy Orchard, a non-prof ee-u-for-all food jtice and joy project.
As the thor of three poetry llectns, Agast Which (2006), Brgg the Shovel Down (2011), and Catalog of Unabashed Gratu (2015), Ross Gay has already garnered a remarkable rerd of achievements and regnn.
ROSS GAY: INTERVIEW—BE HOLDG, GRATU, DELIGHTS
Gay received grants om the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and fellowships om both the Guggenheim Foundatn and the Radcliffe Instute and is a former Cave Canem Workshop fellow and Bread Loaf Wrer’s Conference scholar.
In certa moments, Gay’s poems act as knowg s and slow, solemn nods; at others, his vers are stead wry wks.
Gay bls the quotidian wh a tone of mature joyfulns, elevatg the ordary to the realm of the sublime wh his ft poetic treatment. But Ross Gay did not achieve this nveyed sense of unabashed gratu that embrac both the pleasur and hardships of existence overnight.
ROSS GAY’S UNABASHED GRATU
Gay sists that like this newborn, our own railgs agast the horrors herent existence make both “impossible, / goln” and “longg, gone” (8). And “Thank You, ” Gay urg his rears that spe the fact that “all you love will turn to dt…do not raise your fist. Here Gay remends gratu spe of life’s stggl, whereas his later vers ll for an appreciatn of both the lighter and darker aspects of realy.
In Ross Gay’s send llectn of poetry, Brgg the Shovel Down, the poetic distance between life’s granur and stctn has dramatilly creased. Intertgly, the tular poem and s echo, Gay prents a ghastly childhood episo and s revised, rtorative versn to pict the alternate sis of existence’s .
What mak Ross Gay’s eponymo poem om Catalog of Unabashed Gratu all the more stunng is s -mglg of appreciatn for life’s joys and sorrows. Through the eye of Gay’s matured poetic lens, even the pa of realy be important. Alongsi l praisg the bety of robs and orchards, the buzz of be and the bsh of blooms, Gay also thanks the universe “for not takg my pal when the enge / of his md dragged him / to swig fistfuls of Xanax…[and] for takg my father a few years after his father went down” (84).