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    Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

    by Ross Gay

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    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.  He is an associate professor of poetry at Indiana University and teaches in Drew University’s low-residency MFA program in poetry. He also serves on the board of the Bloomington Community Orchard.

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    Winner, 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, poetry category
    Winner, 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize
    Finalist, 2015 National Book Award, poetry category
    Finalist, 2015 NAACP Image Awards, poetry category

    Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all—death, sorrow, loss—is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.

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    Related Subjects

    Awards
    Literature
    Poetry
    American Poetry
    21st Century American Poetry
    African American Poetry
    Other American Poetry
    American poetry->21st century
    American poetry->African American authors->21st century
    American poetry->Male authors
    2015 National Book Award Finalists->Poetry
    2015 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists
    2015 National Book Critics Circle Award Winners
    Poetry->National Book Critics Circle Award Winners
    Awards
    Literature
    Poetry
    American Poetry
    21st Century American Poetry
    African American Poetry
    Other American Poetry
    American poetry->21st century
    American poetry->African American authors->21st century
    American poetry->Male authors
    2015 National Book Award Finalists->Poetry
    2015 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists
    Publishers Weekly
    05/04/2015
    Gay (Bringing the Shovel Down) drops a third collection that follows through on its title's promise: these simple, joyful poems read like a litany of what's good in the world. Fig trees are high on the list, along with friendship and the act of appreciation itself. "I am grateful," he writes in the title poem. "I just want us to be friends now, forever./ Take this bowl of blackberries from the garden./ The sun has made them warm./ I picked them just for you." Gay welcomes readers into his garden—for playful strolls, for the work of pruning and harvesting—to bear witness to a mind working its hardest to appreciate the world. He assumes the presence of an "ancestor who loved you/ before she knew you." Gay's incessant positivity takes a toll even on him, as evidenced by his occasional lament that he can't actually feel gratitude about or make beauty from the worst things in life. In a poem about a deceased friend, he admits, "I swore when I got into this poem I would convert/ this sorrow into some kind of honey." Gay is known for his exuberant live readings, and though these poems don't translate perfectly to the page, they're inspiring nonetheless. (Feb.)
    From the Publisher
    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

    "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

    "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
     

    “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

    “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

    “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

    “Unabashed gratitude may be what Gay most wants us to notice and appreciate in his work, but getting-to-the-point is the most unabashed gesture of his project. Yet in his most vibrant poems, the getting-there is much more affecting than his destinations. The embracing, intimate sound of his speech is the pleasure.”
    —On the Seawall

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