Bringing the Shovel Down is a re-imagination of the violent mythologies of state and power.

Bringing the Shovel Down (Pitt Poetry Series)

Literature & Fiction

Gay, Ross

Poetry

University of Pittsburgh Press

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.

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (Pitt Poetry Series)

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Gardening & Landscape Design

Winner of PEN America Jean Stein Award Through a kind of lyric research, or lyric meditation, Be Holding connects Dr. J's famously impossible move from the 1980 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers to pick-up basketball and the flying Igbo and the Middle Passage, to photography and surveillance and state violence, to music and personal histories of flight and familial love. Be Holding wonders how the imagination, or how our looking, might make us, or bring us, closer to each other. How our looking might make us reach for each other. And might make us be reaching for each other. And how that reaching might be something like joy.

Be Holding: A Poem (Pitt Poetry Series)

Book Of Delights

RECORDED BOOKS^

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAs Heard on NPR's This American Life'The delights he extols here (music, laughter, generosity, poetry, lots of nature) are bulwarks against casual cruelties . . . contagious in their joy' New York TimesThe winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyric essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders.Among Gay's funny, poetic, philosophical delights: a friend's unabashed use of air quotes, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an aeroplane, the silent nod of acknowledgement between the only two black people in a room. But Gay never dismisses the complexities, even the terrors, of living in America as a black man or the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture or the loss of those he loves. More than anything other subject, though, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world - his garden, the flowers peeking out of the sidewalk, the hypnotic movements of a praying mantis.The Book of Delights is about our shared bonds, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. These remarkable pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.***'These charming, digressive "essayettes" surprise and challenge more than a reader might expect . . . experiences of "delight," recorded daily for a year, vary widely but yield revealing patterns through insights about everything from nature and the body to race and masculinity.' New Yorker'Pure balm for your soul. Savor one at a time every morning, this summer, or wolf them all down en masse on a gorgeous sunny day.' Celeste Ng'A reminder of what the personal essay is best at: finding the profound in the mundane . . . His delight is infectious. It's hard to read Gay and not to be won over.' Seattle Times

The Book of Delights: The life-affirming New York Times bestseller

Essays & Correspondence

Coronet Books

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As Heard on NPR's This American Life “Ross Gay’s eye lands upon wonder at every turn, bolstering my belief in the countless small miracles that surround us.” —Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize winner and U.S. Poet Laureate The winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyric essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders. In The Book of Delights, one of today’s most original literary voices offers up a genre-defying volume of lyric essays written over one tumultuous year. The first nonfiction book from award-winning poet Ross Gay is a record of the small joys we often overlook in our busy lives. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, the silent nod of acknowledgment between the only two black people in a room. But Gay never dismisses the complexities, even the terrors, of living in America as a black man or the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture or the loss of those he loves. More than anything other subject, though, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world--his garden, the flowers peeking out of the sidewalk, the hypnotic movements of a praying mantis. The Book of Delights is about our shared bonds, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. These remarkable pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.

The Book of Delights: Essays

Religion & Spirituality

Algonquin Books

<div>A 45-year-old Black man. A 24-year-old white man. Both writers. One a teacher; the other his student. Before the pandemic separated them, Ross Gay and one of his graduate poetry students, Noah Davis, met regularly to play one-on-one basketball. It was a real hard workout. After each session they were moved to exchange letters about basketball and so much more. Gay and Davis, who both attended college on sports scholarships, have taught and coached basketball, and love the sport--its beauty, its athleticism--see their letters as a way to work through some of the larger issues inherent in sports, from misogyny to race to competition, and as their friendship deepens, basketball becomes a springboard for talking how men relate to each other and to the world. All while never losing sight of how playing games brings them delight, which is, of course, Gay's signature subject.</div>

Practice

Biographies & Memoirs

Davis, Noah

Community & Culture

The Book of Delights

Algonquin Books Of Chapel Hill

Inciting Joy: Essays

<div>In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life's inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognising that connection, and also, crucially, how we expand it. In 'We Kin' he thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come on) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in 'Share Your Bucket' he explores skateboarding's reclamation of public space; he considers the costs of masculinity in 'Grief Suite'; and in 'Through My Tears I Saw', he recognises what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying. In an era when divisive voices take up so much air space, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love? Full of energy, curiosity, and compassion, Inciting Joy is essential reading from one of our most brilliant writers.</div>

The Book of (More) Delights: Essays

Pre-order now! The New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy&nbsp;shares this new chronicle of small, daily wonders--and it is exactly the book we need in these unsettling times. Ross Gay's essays have been called "exquisite" (Tracy K. Smith), "imperative" (the New York Times Book Review), and "brilliant" (Ada Limón). Now, in this new collection of genre-defying pieces, again written over the course of a year, one of America's most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight. For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the "ubiquitous, nefarious" scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world--sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor's fig tree--and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us. For his many fans eagerly awaiting this new volume and for readers who have enjoyed the works of Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Zadie Smith, and Rebecca Solnit, Gay once again offers us "literature that feels as fluent and familiar as a chat with a close friend" (the New York Review of Books). The Book of (More) Delights is a collection to savor and share. &nbsp;

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Books by Gay, Ross