BY GIDEON DALEY
A visiting poet uses his writing to share the power of gratitude and delight.
On Wednesday evening at 6 p.m., Ross Gay, a poet and professor of English at the University of Indiana, read some of his work to community members of Stonehill College. The reading took place virtually, over Zoom.
Gay has won numerous awards for his poetry, such as the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Gay has written four books of poetry and a book of essays.
Throughout the evening, Gay read from three of his poems and three of his essays. He started out reading from his most recent book, a book-length poem called Be Holding, which centered around the story of the 70s basketball player Julius Erving, also known as Dr. J, who is a favorite player of Gay’s.
“And so Doc leapt, he leapt his feet, which means more or less jumping with the ball with nowhere to go,” Gay said as he read aloud. Gay’s excerpt centered around a YouTube clip he watched on April 5, 2015, at 1:48 a.m. over and over again of Erving, who was well known for his ability to dunk.
“Have you ever decided anything in the air?” Gay said as he showed a picture of one of Erving’s higher jumps, while he was surrounded by other players.
Gay also read a series of short essays from a larger collection he wrote called The Book of Delights, which he released in 2019. The book, he said, came from a challenge he gave himself while at an artist’s residency in Italy.
The challenge had three rules. He must write an essay about something that delighted him every day, he must write it by hand, and he must write them quickly, which he took to mean under 30 minutes. “I think I did that to lower the resistance to any kind of daily project that I could have,” he said, as he said most of the time he gets his worst writers’ block when he is given an actual assignment to work on.
“They're just like notes, they have a kind of diaristic feeling, sometimes to them. But they're daily, they're very daily. And the titles are things like, The High Five from Strangers, etc.,” he said about his essays. “The High Five from Strangers, etc.,” an essay about how he delights in random, pleasant physical interactions with strangers, was the first essay he read aloud.
“Someone scooting by, the hand on my back, the handshake, I love them all,” he said in the essay.
The reading was co-sponsored by The Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Social Justice, the Catholic Jewish Dialogue Committee, the Provost Office, and the Office of the Dean of the May School of Arts and Sciences. It was the first event of the 20th year of Chet Raymo Literary Series, which was named for a Stonehill Faculty member who wrote numerous columns and works surrounding nature.
The reading was introduced by Amra Brooks, a Stonehill College professor of creative writing. “Every time I read about Ross Gay or talk to someone about his work, people always say, we need him now more than ever,” she said while introducing him.
The Zoom meeting had roughly 115 members during the lecture. The meeting consisted of both students and faculty members from the Stonehill community.
“I'll say, if there's something I'm excited for people to come away from my work with, in addition to the possibility that it might make people inclined to feel generous and loving to other people, I would also say maybe, part of what I'm trying to do with my worth is to pay very close attention,” Gay said when asked what the one thing he would want readers to get from his work would be.
“I’m just trying to point at stuff, I'm trying to point and be like, in a certain kind of way I'm trying to do it for myself, but in doing it for myself I'm also trying to offer it as an opportunity to point at what you love, and share what you love,” he said in response.