My highlighting of Black poets in the month of February continues with another personal favorite, Ross Gay.
This poet has achieved fame for his collections of essays, beginning with “The Book of Delights.” Written over the course of a year, Gay dedicated himself to the discipline or practice of searching for a daily delight. Most of his delights involve simple things like watching someone roller-skate, eating a delicious piece of fruit or receiving a kind word from a stranger. Gay claims that such things “occasioned a kind of delight radar … developed a delight muscle.”
The more you look for delight, the more you see.
Gay’s award-winning poetry book, “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” likewise pays attention to the apparently quotidian with profound results. His poems exemplify the idea that universal feelings are found in particular experiences. For example, in writing a poem for a wedding present for two friends, Gay describes “a goldfinch kissing a sunflower,” which becomes a metaphor for the sacrificial joy between two people. Or in the poem, “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian,” the fruit of a single tree draws people of different ages, races and ethnicities together to enjoy the bounty, a eucharistic feast that creates a community of “strangers maybe never again.”
I used the phrase “eucharistic feast” to mean a general meal of thanksgiving, yet I am aware that those words have spiritual undertones. A recent reviewer praised Gay’s work as “a secular blessing.” I understand that Gay does not write from a specific religious perspective. But why qualify a blessing as secular or sacred? His writing shows that the supposed dichotomy between secular and sacred is false. Delight and gratitude are not exclusive to a particular building, day of the week or religious tradition. The blessing is found in the world and in our lives.
I add that Gay writes about hard truths, including his experience with racism. That same fig tree is in Philadelphia — “a city like most which has murdered its own people.” As Gay provocatively wrote, “If you’re Black in this country, you’re not allowed to be innocent.” Sit with that a moment.
Violence against people of color continues across our country at disproportionately higher rates. Look no further than Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, or the children poisoned by lead in Flint, Michigan. The Executive Summary of the 2021 Chatham County Community Assessment included this finding: “Historic and continued systemic racism persists in driving health inequities across nearly all facets of health and well-being in Chatham County.”
Poetry that avoids painful truths runs the risk of sentimentality. Ironically, saccharine words can leave a bitter taste in one’s mouth. Gay is doing something else — “I would convert this sorrow into some kind of honey with the little musics I can sometimes make.”
Writings that perform “little musics” are indeed a blessing. I invite you to read Ross Gay to tune your delight radar, exercise your gratitude muscle and even be a part of turning sorrow into honey.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church. His newly-published book is a collection of his columns for the Chatham News + Record titled “Hope Matters: Churchless Sermons.”