Ross Gay is the author of two previous collections, Against Which and Bringing the Shovel Down. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Orion, the Sun, and elsewhere. ÊHe is an associate professor of poetry at Indiana University and teaches in
"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 sentimental, but the poems don't feel remotely
treacly to me. They feel bold and wild and weird."
--American Poetry Review
"In this bright 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 Earth Works: Selected Essays
"Like one big celebration bursting with joy . . . Gay's poems burst
forth in leggy, unexpected ways, zooming in on legs furred with
pollen or soil breast-stroking into the xylem. Gay's praise is
Whitmanesque, full of manure, mulberry-stained purple bird poop,
dirty clothes and hangovers, but also the pleasure of bare feet, of
pruning a peach tree, of feeding a neighbor. . . . Whether you're
feeling like you have a whole brass band of gratitude or if you're
feeling like you only have a rusty horn, read this book. Gay even
thanks you for reading it, saying I can't stop my gratitude, which
includes dear reader, you for staying here with me, for moving your
lips just so as I speak."
--Tess Taylor, NPR, All Things Considered
"Ross Gay is a fresh voice in American poetry. His poems are
fast-paced, carefully crafted with great attention to detail of
those he writes about and the images that surround him. His poetry
consists of beautiful metaphors and startling images."
--Fox Chase Review
"Ross Gay offers up a muscled poetry of a thousand surprises,
giving us a powerful collection that fireworks even the bleakest
nights with ardency and grace. Few contemporary poets risk singing
such a singular compassion for the wounded world with this kind of
inimitable musicality, intelligence, and intoxicating joy."
--Aimee Nezhukumatathil
"The Bloomington Community Orchard must have spread its roots into
Ross Gay, an Indiana University English professor, as the organic
poems in his third collection bear fruit, line by line, with each
fresh word or phrase. These are accessible, alive poems that give
one the sense of sitting and talking in the poet's kitchen. Often
vulnerable and self-conscious in tone, they dig deep in the dirt of
memory and unearth powerful images. In 'Burial, ' the speaker adds
his father's ashes to the soil while planting a plum tree, and he
sees his mother as a bison, dragging 'her hooves through the ash /
of her heart, ' in 'c'mon!' Whether by contemplating the
extraordinary within everyday acts (sleeping in clothes, drinking
water, buttoning and unbuttoning a shirt), or by entwining past and
present as he pays homage to parents, friends, even his former
love, Gay embraces the natural cycles of life and death as only an
introspective gardener and accomplished poet can."
--Booklist
"These poems are shout-outs to earth's abundance: the fruits,
blooms, meals, insects, waters, conversations, trees, embraces, and
helping hands--the taken-for-granted wonders that make life worth
living, even in the face of death. Lyric and narrative, elegy and
epithalamion, intoxicated and intoxicating--expansive, but
breathlessly uttered, urgent. Ross Gay has much to say to you--yes,
dear reader, you--and you definitely want to hear it."
--Evie Shockley
"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
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