Thursday evening, Ross Gay met with college writers in the Benzinger Lounge to share his stories and talk about their questions. He was charming, personable, and reflective. His poems are very voice based works of art and it was a wonderful experience to hear them spoken by him.
After being introduced by Laura Thomas, Ross Gay read 3 poems: “The Opening”, “Ode to Sleeping in My Clothes”, and “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt”. His most recent work, and also the book he read from, is titled catalog of unabashed gratitude. All of Gay’s poems link beauty and sadness in astonishing images that lead the reader to see not just the problems we face as a society, but also the beauty in the everydayness of our world. One of his elements for achieving this, in conjunction with his vivid imagery, is his titles. As can be seen by the poems he read and as he said himself, “Titles are important”. The can have a profound effect on the tone and perhaps surprisingly the conclusion/outcome of a poem. Just looking at the table of contents to his latest book, where there are titles like “Spoon”, “Armpit”, and “C’Mon!”, and readers know Gay has mastered the art of titling a poem.
In addition to speaking about his love of teaching and working collaboratively with other artists- a really “delightful” activity- Ross Gay spoke about the inspiration/process involved in his individual work. In some ways his poems ask questions more than they answer them. Or at least that’s how they start, often pertaining to the theme of justice or of a personal instance. He uses the image or metaphor of a garden or orchard often because they bring a sense of conversion or change to the poem and the narrator. In that way the poem will often begin to shift from questioning to pondering. These natural growing earthy images are reflective of the emotional state of the narrator as he guides us through the poem in what can sometimes seem as wandering poem but often is all the more powerful for the journey it takes us on. This is also why certain poems play so carefully on the use of end lines, often cut off in seemingly odd places that makes the lines unstable but where new meaning is found in that instability. It is in this instability or wondering association of images that readers and Ross Gay himself says find new meaning, or at the very least a shift in perspective. At the Tea Thursday evening, Gay said that he wrote a poem that through the writing process transformed his relationship with his father, which had been strained.
My favorite poem though in catalog of unabashed gratitude is “Spoon”. It is a beautiful, amazing piece that he wrote for a friend of his that was murdered. Both sad, joyful, political, and natural, I think it captures what a poem can be and the dexterity of Ross Gay’s talents. Listen to him read “Spoon” here.
