Ross gay an ode to sleeping in my clothes
REVIEW: Writers’ Tea with Ross Gay
Thursday evening, Ross Gay met with college writers in the Benzinger Lounge to give 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 awesome experience to perceive them spoken by him.
After being introduced by Laura Thomas, Ross Gay scan 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 guide 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 interpret 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 guide, where there are titles like “Spoon”, “Armpit”, and “C’Mon!”, and readers realize Gay has
No one knew or at least
I didn’t know
they knew
what the thin disks
threaded here
on my shirt
might give me
in terms of joy
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 and
I am a woman
that morning
slipping the glass
through its slot
I tread
differently that day
or some of it
anyway
my conversations
are different
and the car bomb slicing the air
and the people in it
for a quarter mile
and the honeybee’s
legs furred with pollen
mean another
thing to me
than on the other days
which too have
been drizzled in this
simplest of joys
in this world
of spaceships and subatomic
this and that
two maybe three
times a day
some days
I have the different pleasure
of slowly untethering
the one side
from the other
which is like unbuckling
a stack of vertebrae
with delicacy
for I must only use
the tips
of my fingers
with which I will
one day close
my mother’s eyes
this is as delicate
as we can be
in this life
practicing
like this
giving the raft of our hands
to the clumsy spider
and blowing soft until she
lifts her damp heft and
crawls off
we practice li
1. Body Positivity
“Feet” and “Armpit” are two poems that gab about body parts that don’t usually acquire a lot of love in literature or in animation. “Armpit” mentions armpits of two people, and some of it takes place in a library where a bookish woman appears. That means there’s even more to admire because books. “Feet” takes on the challenge of loving jacked-up feet in all their jacked-up-ed-ness.2. Odes to Simple Things
“Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt”—He calls this action a “gift” that “is not to be taken lightly.” He refers to the buttons as “thin disks / threaded here.”Review | Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, Ross Gay
Dear Walt Whitman:
I’m writing to assure you that your poetic voice and perspective are alive and adv in American verse of the 21st century. I say this after having read Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Queer , a book that could only have been written in a world where you, dear Walt, persist to thrive in the poetic imagination.
All of your signature components possess been passed down to and adapted by Gay—your long breath line is there, your ecstasy, your rapture and wonder. It is a poem of joy, yes, but people often forget that you wrote Drum-Taps and that “what is removed drops horribly in the pail.” Not so much Ross Gay. Yes, as the title tells us, the book is a catalog/list of joy and thanks that will not be ashamed to burst forth. But Gay understands the necessity of the tragic or grim mixed with sheer abundance of wonder; it’s how life really is, and it makes for more complex art than one that is too single-minded.
I’m not saying, Mr. Whitman, that if you read Gay’s book you would mistake it for your retain. Gay is his hold poet with his hold voice and technique. Walt, y
2013 Winner of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize
- By Mass Review
The 2013 Winner of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize is Ross Gay, for his poem "Ode to Sleeping in My Clothes," published in Volume 53, Issue 1.
A Cave Canem Fellow, Ross Gay is storyteller of Against Which and Bringing the Shovel Down, the title poem of which enacts this poet’s excruciating extremes of terror and tenderness, and his profound understanding of what it means to be human. Gay’s poems contain appeared in American Poetry Review and Ploughshares, among others, and Terrance Hayes dubbed him “some gentle of brilliant latter-day troubadour.” An editor with the chapbook press Q Road, he teaches poetry at Indiana University and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Drew University. He is also on the board of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a publicly-owned, volunteer-run food justice project.
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