A review by bgg616
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, by Ross Gay
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,