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Ross Gay On Inciting Joy (and Gratitude)

ROSS GAY BY ELLA MAZUR

The celebrated poet on his latest collection, and holding space for gratitude

WORDS BY MICHAEL ZARATHUS-COOK & REBECCA LASHMAR | ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRANDON HICKS | INDIANA | ARTS & LETTERS

NOV 07, 2022 | ISSUE 10

THE BRICK HOUSE


MZC | At the core of this conversation is the different modes of thinking that exist between composing poetry and composing essays—and the bridge that exists between the two. You open the 14th incitement with the following quotation:


“I am a brick in a house that is being built

around your house.” from “Gratitude” by Cornelius Eady


I looked through and found that “brick” was used eight times in Inciting Joy, and couldn’t help but think of each of these 14 incitements as a giant brick in a house that’s being built around “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude”. To what extent are these two works in communication with one another?


RG ── I love that. I love that question and the observation that it’s totally corresponding with that poem. It’s absolutely the case, and that poem is also in conversation with poems of mine earlier. It’s interesting to think of it as a theme or a through line to the work, but I love what you’re saying about this. I think this book is like 14 walls being built around the Catalog book, to house it, in a certain kind of way. And I think that’s right. One of the things that this book is trying so hard to do is to study, contemplate the ways and the practices that help us become aware of tending to one another. I have this working definition of joy: which is the way that we carry each other. With Catalog, which again comes from all kinds of writers and teachers, I think I was trying to contemplate what is wondrous, what is beautiful and lovely and astonishing. And, also, what is heartbreaking. To disentangle them means to disentangle ourselves from life, from being among the living. So, that means when I’m texting my friends, “Yo, you got to get the long beans and the okra and the tomatoes, it’s all coming on right now. You got to get over there,” they do the same for me. And it’s great to witness the ways that we’re constantly in those sorts of networks. And that feels very much like the kind of wall that those essays are making. Like a holding wall, not a “‘I’m bigger than you” wall. Or more significant, but a holding wall of gratitude. I think that’s right.

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