greatskittishbakeoff's review
5.0
holy fuck. wow. what an absolute wonder of a book. so bursting with life!! this book felt like a deep, profound, and hard-won call to meet life with love and gratitude, even when it's full of pain, and the language of the poems was gorgeous and inventive.
cstefko's review against another edition
3.0
3 stars
I would have liked to see a little more variety in the collection, but there's definitely some beautiful poems here. And it was nice to read poems that expressed so much joy, humor, and, yes, gratitude for life. I feel an inner peace after reading this collection. I would recommend it if you enjoy Mary Oliver's work.
I would have liked to see a little more variety in the collection, but there's definitely some beautiful poems here. And it was nice to read poems that expressed so much joy, humor, and, yes, gratitude for life. I feel an inner peace after reading this collection. I would recommend it if you enjoy Mary Oliver's work.
hanamarma's review
4.0
Ross Gay seems to be a very positive person, if his poetry is any indication. I was not unsettled at all by this book, something that I like my poetry to do. However, it did remind me of all the good in the world, giving me the space to take a deep breath and remember the green and sunny bits of life. So I enjoyed it. Of course, these poems are not all sunshine as they deal with death quite a bit, but I thought Gay handled these poems with such gentleness and love. Some of the poems that I especially liked were "burial," "to the mulberry tree," and "spoon."
torit's review
5.0
Love this collection every time I read it! It’s filled with a joy I don’t see a lot in poetry.
littlebookjockey's review
1.0
In short, I didn't like this book. Mostly, I didn't like the style. There weren't enough punctuation breaks, so the lines ran into each other and the rhythm got lost. There wasn't a single poem, or even a single line, that I liked. I don't understand why this won awards, to be honest.
Read the review on my blog here.
Read the review on my blog here.
maddyb001's review
3.0
This book is about grief and holding onto remembrances after their origins have disappeared. It is less about gratitude in one's day-to-day life and more about reckoning with how to survive while your loved ones are no longer there.
bgg616's review
4.0
This is Ross Gay’s third volume of poetry. It won the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the National Critics Circle Award for Poetry and a finalist for the National Book Award. A native of Youngstown, Ohio, he teaches at Indiana University. He was not a motivated student, but thanks to a few teachers along the way who saw his potential, he eventually earned a BA from Lafayette College, an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and a PhD in English from Temple University.
This volume of Gay’s has poems that are light, and funny, that show his gardener’s love of earth and plants, and occasionally look into his life as a black man in America. This volume includes several odes which stand up well to the famous odes of Pablo Neruda. Like Neruda, Gay’s odes honor ordinary things in his life including “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt”.
this is not something to be taken lightly
the gift
of buttoning one’s shirt
slowly
top to bottom
or bottom to top or sometimes
the buttons will be on the other side
The poem “To the mulberry tree” shows his gardener side. This excerpt is an illustration of his connection to plants and the earth, and his humor:
Everybody knows it’s good luck
If inconvenient
when a bird shits on you
but even moreso
good luck if the bird shits on you
when you’re plucking
gold current tomatoes
sweet enough to make your bare feet
lift just so
off the ground
and the beetles below scurry
and giggle
Included here is an interview with the author about this book https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwgMmSjvA7A
Gay’s poems will pull you in, make you laugh and cry,
This volume of Gay’s has poems that are light, and funny, that show his gardener’s love of earth and plants, and occasionally look into his life as a black man in America. This volume includes several odes which stand up well to the famous odes of Pablo Neruda. Like Neruda, Gay’s odes honor ordinary things in his life including “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt”.
this is not something to be taken lightly
the gift
of buttoning one’s shirt
slowly
top to bottom
or bottom to top or sometimes
the buttons will be on the other side
The poem “To the mulberry tree” shows his gardener side. This excerpt is an illustration of his connection to plants and the earth, and his humor:
Everybody knows it’s good luck
If inconvenient
when a bird shits on you
but even moreso
good luck if the bird shits on you
when you’re plucking
gold current tomatoes
sweet enough to make your bare feet
lift just so
off the ground
and the beetles below scurry
and giggle
Included here is an interview with the author about this book https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwgMmSjvA7A
Gay’s poems will pull you in, make you laugh and cry,
healnotslay's review
Sentences so unbroken and continuous I felt like I was breathless trying to keep up
“what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?”
“what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?”