Ross Gay began his March 2 reading with pieces he called “cousins of poems”—genre-bending essays from “The Book of Delights.” But not before an introduction by Jeanine DeRusha, English professor at Manchester Community College, who—more than his myriad accomplishments as poet and writer (Gay is a Guggenheim recipient)—emphasized the need for poetry in a time where she has never had so many students speak so candidly to her about depression and anxiety. Representing the Connecticut Poetry Circuit as its 2020-21 touring poet, Gay reminded a youthful audience of 80 about the bright, gentle worlds made possible through poetry.
Among the small delights Gay spoke about was one that the pandemic has made dangerous. Touch factored largely in the first piece he read: a teenage girl high-fives him, a man smacks his bicep, a waitress squeezes his shoulder. The larger book was written in a period of one year, a delight a day (give or take, Gay says), from August 1, 2016, to August 1, 2017. As the country split, Gay memorialized the solace felt in touch. The socially distant reality that increased the virtual room’s appreciation for the first essay, Gay could not have foreseen.
In another piece, the speaker watches a man feed a pigeon under the Washington Square Arc; the pair is intimate, they are “slow dancing.” “Giggling” at his “good fortune” for having seen such a sight, the speaker turns a corner, and almost immediately sees a woman pull breadcrumbs from her pocket—a bird flaps into her hand, ready to be fed. The narrator stares in “bafflement,” and the woman smiles, nodding at him “as if to say, we are everywhere.” Gentle quotidian surprises are celebrated by the poet, who presented delights even when not reading.
Perhaps it was because Gay had read first from “The Book of Delights” that I was attuned to those that presented themselves in the brief waiting period between poems. Gay often laughs at his own poem titles, silly ones like “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt” and “An Abundance of Public Toilets.” Before he begins what he calls perhaps his “most-foul mouthed poem” (a bird releases its last meal onto the speaker), he pulls a forgotten pressed lily from between the pages of his book. Calls it good luck.
Ross Gay’s answers during the question segment after the reading were like his poems: perhaps mystical, but never reticent. Gay’s approach to his writing is rooted in generosity. He does most of his work in the revision phase, and acts against the common writing advice to cut material; instead, his revision process is one of “expansion.” First drafts are where he gets things down, “conceives,” and second drafts are where he “disrupts,” teasing out what he really means.
Gay expands on his definition of “disrupt” in regards to revision. He makes clear that he is not one to “wrangle” or “discipline” a line, but to place them on a different course to see if they ride. His explanation stands in distinction to poets of sonnets or sestinas, who, loyal to form, apparently do the wrangling that Gay steers away from. “Lines are breaths,” he says, then continues, “poems are bodies—and profoundly bodily.” They must be allowed to follow their natural course, otherwise, they might suffocate and die.
Perhaps one of Gay’s most striking assertions is, “my voice is a choir.” He believes the poets he reads and admires guide him during the writing process so that his thoughts when he writes might be “There goes Terrance Hayes at this turn of phrase, and now here comes Lucille Clifton.” (He notes as an aside, in regards to Clifton, “she’s always there.”) Gay disrupts the notion of writing as solitary; sure, he might write alone, currently in a single room at a retreat, but a symphony of voices point him to what he is trying to pen.
He works first from the body, extending those impressions onto the page. Listening to Gay speak about his process, it becomes obvious why his lines linger in a reader’s consciousness, why images take shape fast and bright. He is always “listening for something” when he “does not yet know what to listen for.” Meaning, he reaches for that which he himself cannot yet conceive and bestows upon the reader a chance to do the work. And what a chance it is.
