Joy: (n) a feeling of great pleasure and happiness QOTD: What incites your joy? Ross Gay's latest installment, Inciting Joy, is out now and it is a hit. I love what he has to say about joy always being associated with or the result of some great feat or endeavor or being entangled somehow with pain. He dares us to imagine a life where joy just naturally flows through us in every day life. He asks us to imagine joy and sorrow as partners. He dares to interrogate what incites joy. I'm already gushing and I haven't even finished yet. Thank you to @algonquinbooks for the gifted copy. 🌺 SYNOPSIS 🌺 An intimate and electrifying collection of essays from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning 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 recognizing 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 recognizes 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. #IncitingJoy #RossGay #books #tbr #bookstagram #reading #essays #bookphotography #bookworm #bookcommunity #bookreviewer #bookrecommendation #bookish #bookstagrammer #booklover #booksbooksbooks #joy #selfcare #BIPOCBookstagram #bibliophile (at Forest Avenue) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkMi6TrrUpW/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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A Small Needful Fact
Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
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NATIONAL POETRY MONTH April 22, 2021 Patience by Ross Gay Call it sloth; call it sleaze; call it bummery if you please; I’ll call it patience; I’ll call it joy, this, my supine congress with the newly yawning grass and beetles chittering in their offices beneath me, as I nearly drifting to dream admire this so-called weed which, if I guarded with teeth bared my garden of all alien breeds, if I was all knife and axe and made a life of hacking would not have burst gorgeous forth and beckoning these sort of phallic spires ringleted by these sort of vaginal blooms which the new bees, being bees, heed; and yes, it is spring, if you can’t tell from the words my mind makes of the world, and everything makes me mildly or more hungry—the worm turning in the leaf mold; the pear blooms howling forth their pungence like a choir of wet-dreamed boys hiking up their skirts; even the neighbor cat’s shimmy through the grin in the fence, and the way this bee before me after whispering in my ear dips her head into those dainty lips not exactly like one entering a chapel and friends as if that wasn’t enough blooms forth with her forehead dusted gold like she has been licked and so blessed by the kind of God to whom this poem is prayer. #nationalpoetrymonth #day22 #rossgay #patience https://www.instagram.com/p/CN99fPmBAt6Yy2MCaqzE8JLUprJsAO2kwE2siE0/?igshid=1n85in4qquhm4
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New releases for Friday 9th April 2021 (1/3) - @romyromyromy @young_ @nickwaterhouse @innovativeleisure @orgonemusic @3palmrecords @silver.synthetic @thirdmanrecords @thenumerogroup #femalespecies #rossgay @jagjaguwar #megbaird @maryoverthere @3lobed @bmblackmidi @roughtraderecords #redspinksandpurples @slumberlandrecords @spiritofthebeehive @saddlecreek @macsuperchunk #nrr @thatevangreer @getbetterrecords @clairerousay (at Redscroll Records) https://www.instagram.com/p/CNa8u4xsJjp/?igshid=1tkfyf2ghvv09
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I'm pretty geeked about this - hope you can attend... Tomorrow - Sat April 25th, 4pm PST Join us for a virtual conversation and reading with poet and essayist Ross Gay, the author of THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS, as part of our celebration of independent booksellers and our community of Seattle readers! Ross will be in conversation with writer, performer, and teaching artist Daemond Arrindell, and bookseller Robert Sindelar of Third Place Books. This event will take place on Zoom. Please register to attend this event here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0DnKiPhgTHGqbl74tr-grA Reposted from @thirdplacebooks We got something special happening for #SEAbookstoreday Copies of this book are available to order on our website. We got this Seattle! #thirdplacebooks #thirdplacefirst #orderwiththird #orderonline #SEAbookstoreday #bookstores #bookstagram #books #rossgay #thebookofdelights #fiction #nonfiction #readingchallenge #reading #read #bookish #seattle #shopseattle #shopsmall #shopindie #shoplocal #shopsmallbusiness #saveindiebookstores #wegotthisseattle https://www.instagram.com/p/B_YR9hXJhaW/?igshid=18me2ubmqasix
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Poem to my child, if ever you shall be by Ross Gay
—after Steve Scafidi
The way the universe sat waiting to become,
quietly, in the nether of space and time,
you too remain some cellular snuggle
dangling between my legs, curled in the warm
swim of my mostly quietest self. If you come to be —
And who knows? — I wonder, little bubble
of unbudded capillaries, little one ever aswirl
in my vascular galaxies, what would you think
of this world which turns itself steadily
into an oblivion that hurts, and hurts bad?
Would you curse me my careless caressing you
into this world or would you rise up
and, mustering all your strength into that tiny throat
which one day, no doubt, would grow big and strong,
scream and scream and scream until you break the back of one injustice,
or at least get to your knees to kiss back to life
some roadkill? I have so many questions for you,
for you are closer to me than anyone
has ever been, tumbling, as you are, this second,
through my heart’s every chamber, your teeny mouth
singing along with the half-broke workhorse’s steady boom and gasp.
And since we’re talking today I should tell you,
though I know you sneak a peek sometimes
through your father’s eyes, it’s a glorious day,
and there are millions of leaves collecting against the curbs,
and they’re the most delicate shade of gold
we’ve ever seen and must favor the transparent
wings of the angels you’re swimming with, little angel.
And as to your mother — well, I don’t know —
but my guess is that lilac bursts from her throat
and she is both honeybee and wasp and some kind of moan to boot
and probably she dances in the morning —
but who knows? You’ll swim beneath that bridge if it comes.
For now let me tell you about the bush called honeysuckle
that the sad call a weed, and how you could push your little
sun-licked face into the throngs and breathe and breathe.
Sweetness would be your name, and you would wonder why
four of your teeth are so sharp, and the tiny mountain range
of your knuckles so hard. And you would throw back your head
and open your mouth at the cows lowing their human songs
in the field, and the pigs swimming in shit and clover,
and everything on this earth, little dreamer, little dreamer
of the new world, holy, every rain drop and sand grain and blade
of grass worthy of gasp and joy and love, tiny shaman,
tiny blood thrust, tiny trillion cells trilling and trilling,
little dreamer, little hard hat, little heartbeat,
little best of me.
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I love seeing my readers post pics of my books. It's one thing to create a book, but a totally different and humbling experience to see your book out in the wild! Thank you @kelkayb for buying my book and making my day!!! If anyone else got my books and takes a pic with it, please tag me so I can give you a shoutout. P.S. The Kindle version of A Poet's Manifesto is available FREE to download through end of 10/15/17 on Amazon.com. #newbook #book #books #poetry #writing #poetsofinstagram #poetsmanifesto #writer #repost #shoutout #pin #rossgay
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To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian
Tumbling through the
city in my
mind without once
looking up
the racket in
the lugwork probably
rehearsing some
stupid thing I
said or did
some crime or
other the city they
say is a lonely
place until yes
the sound of sweeping
and a woman
yes with a
broom beneath
which you are now
too the canopy
of a fig its
arms pulling the
September sun to it
and she
has a hose too
and so works hard
rinsing and scrubbing
the walk
lest some poor sod
slip on the
silk of a fig
and break his hip
and not probably
reach over to gobble up
the perpetrator
the light catches
the veins in her hands
when I ask about
the tree they
flutter in the air and
she says take
as much as
you can
help me
so I load my
pockets and mouth
and she points
to the step-ladder against
the wall to
mean more but
I was without a
sack so my meager
plunder would have to
suffice and an old woman
whom gravity
was pulling into
the earth loosed one
from a low slung
branch and its eye
wept like hers
which she dabbed
with a kerchief as she
cleaved the fig with
what remained of her
teeth and soon there were
eight or nine
people gathered beneath
the tree looking into
it like a
constellation pointing
do you see it
and I am tall and so
good for these things
and a bald man even
told me so
when I grabbed three
or four for
him reaching into the
giddy throngs of
yellow-jackets sugar
stoned which he only
pointed to smiling and
rubbing his stomach
I mean he was really rubbing his stomach
like there was a baby
in there
it was hot his
head shone while he
offered recipes to the
group using words which
I couldn’t understand and besides
I was a little
tipsy on the dance
of the velvety heart rolling
in my mouth
pulling me down and
down into the
oldest countries of my
body where I ate my first fig
from the hand of a man who escaped his country
by swimming through the night
and maybe
never said more than
five words to me
at once but gave me
figs and a man on his way
to work hops twice
to reach at last his
fig which he smiles at and calls
baby, c’mere baby,
he says and blows a kiss
to the tree which everyone knows
cannot grow this far north
being Mediterranean
and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils
of Jordan and Sicily
but no one told the fig tree
or the immigrants
there is a way
the fig tree grows
in groves it wants,
it seems, to hold us,
yes I am anthropomorphizing
goddammit I have twice
in the last thirty seconds
rubbed my sweaty
forearm into someone else’s
sweaty shoulder
gleeful eating out of each other’s hands
on Christian St.
in Philadelphia a city like most
which has murdered its own
people
this is true
we are feeding each other
from a tree
at the corner of Christian and 9th
strangers maybe
never again.
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I cannot agree more. The challenges and difficulties of our journeys is the meat and marrow of growth and transformation. Once again, I’m compelled to sing the chorus written by John Cage: “The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.” #Repost @onbeing ・・・ Ross Gay embodies joy. He spent a year writing an essay each day inspired by something that delighted him — 100 of which were collected into “The Book of Delights.” In this week’s On Being, he talks about cultivating joy as a practice that lives alongside grappling with mortality. “Joy has nothing to do with ease,” he says. “And joy has everything to do with the fact that we’re all going to die.” The conversation was recorded live at @loftliterarycenter’s 2019 Wordplay Festival in Minneapolis, Minnesota. #onbeing #podcast #podcasting #interview #listen #newepisode #new #brandnew #joy #instagood #joyful #fullofjoy #spirit #question #wisdom #conversation #rossgay #writer #poet #poetry #poetsofinstagram #bookofdelights #delight #delightful #difficulty #quotes #practice #cultivatejoy https://www.instagram.com/p/B0bfINvDpi1RbUjclRwu8paCauK4-IoTHWdLCA0/?igshid=unn5d62txada
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