Art of the Week: Ross Gay says Thank You for Both Joy and Mortality

“When I’m thinking about joy, I’m thinking about that at the same time as something wonderful is happening…we are also in the process of dying.” Ross Gay Credit: Ross Gay (left), Expedition Press (right)

By Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr

I like to think of Ross Gay as a gardener who writes poetry, although most would think of him the other way ‘round (gardening poet). His love for growing things has given him deep attention to thriving, life which acknowledges suffering and still overflows with joy.

“To understand that we are all suffering – and so to practice tenderness and mercy –  is a quality of what Ross calls ‘adult joy.’ Starting with his cherished essay collection The Book of Delights, he began to accompany many in learning…to practice delight and cultivate joy,” says Krista Tippett of On Being.

Of Joy, Death and Joy-ning in the Garden and Life

In his poem Thank You, “Ross Gay acknowledges mortality but instead guides the reader toward joy and wonder. Accepting life’s seasons, he chooses gratitude over despair. He reminds us that every month – every day – we can embrace thanksgiving,” shares Marjorie Maddox.

Ross Gay talks about how “joy has everything to do with the fact that we’re all going to die”:

I have really been thinking that joy is the moments — for me, the moments when my alienation from people — but not just people, from the whole thing — it goes away, and it shrinks. If it was a visual thing, like, everything becomes luminous. And I love that mycelium, or forest metaphor, that there’s this thing connecting us. And among the things of that thing connecting us is that we that have this common experience; many common experiences, but a really foundational one is that we are not here forever.

And that — that’s a joining, a joy-ning.

Thank You
By Ross Gay

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden’s dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

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