#rossgay

[maymosses]

[shawnparell]

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.

[thebookdragon217]

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=

[eeeeeeerin]

[logansruin-blog]

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

[trixie-and-ames]

#dinner and a #book Roasted chickpea salad and The Book of Delights by Ross Gay #springdining #audiobook #rossgay #thebookofdelights #booklover https://www.instagram.com/p/CNbLPx7FqNi/?igshid=15tfifknz8nn7

[redscroll]

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

[sojc123]

In celebration of Black History Month: "A Small Needful Fact," a poem by Ross Gay. #poem #poetry #rossgay #blackpoet #blackhistorymonth2021 #blackhistorymonth365 #blackhistorymonthpoem #poetrynerd #poetryisnotdead #blackhistorymonth #poetry_addicts #featuredpoet (at Huntsville, Alabama) https://www.instagram.com/p/CKyFCHTlyqE/?igshid=915x3ii5evyf

[braidedthreads]

A Small Needful Fact

A Small Needful Fact

Ross Gay

[stumblingtowardsgrace]

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

[brahmarakshas]

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.

[shawnparell]

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.

[abentleywrites]

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

[thedirtbagdad]

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

[nellfell13]

Today I’m trying to find delight in the rain and delight in the last sugary sip of my coffee. I can’t write. I haven’t written a new poem since late winter. So I’m trying to find delight in that silence. And delight in the noise when it finally decides to arrive. #littlepoetbighair #poetry #poet #writerlife #delights #rossgay #writersblock #nbpt #communecafe #selfie #curlygirl (at Commune Cafe) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJngurh4If/?igshid=yid1aanau2l4

[lemolobooks]

A lava walk on #Maui after a morning of reading Ross Gays essays #sundayfunday #delightfulwalk #thebookofdelights #rossgay #beachreading #shopindiebookstores (at Kihei, Hawaii) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuSRWuelEhO/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=roplt5bsqbo