by Ross Gay
Book list The Bloomington Community Orchard must have spread its roots into Ross Gay, an Indiana University English professor, as the organic poems in his third collection bear fruit, line by line, with each fresh word or phrase. These are accessible, alive poems that give one the sense of sitting and talking in the poet's kitchen. Often vulnerable and self-conscious in tone, they dig deep in the dirt of memory and unearth powerful images. In Burial, the speaker adds his father's ashes to the soil while planting a plum tree, and he sees his mother as a bison, dragging her hooves through the ash / of her heart, in c'mon! Whether by contemplating the extraordinary within everyday acts (sleeping in clothes, drinking water, buttoning and unbuttoning a shirt), or by entwining past and present as he pays homage to parents, friends, even his former love, Gay embraces the natural cycles of life and death as only an introspective gardener and accomplished poet can.--St. John, Janet Copyright 2015 Booklist From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission. |
