ReadUP 2024: Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude: Reviews

"A finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, Ross Gay’s luminous collection of poems Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude brims with love of the world. Whether he’s mixing his father’s ashes with a tree he’s planting, buttoning his shirt, or remembering the casualness of childhood violence, Gay infuses every moment with ardor and beauty. Charged with unique energy, Gay’s headlong, loose-limbed lines propel the listener yet let her slow down enough to actually see the world" (Poetry Foundation). 

"Gay's poems burst forth in leggy, unexpected ways, zooming in on legs furred with pollen or soil breast-stroking into the xylem. Gay's praise is Whitmanesque, full of manure, mulberry-stained purple bird poop, dirty clothes and hangovers, but also the pleasure of bare feet, of pruning a peach tree, of feeding a neighbor" (NPR). 

"Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude stakes itself in the wildness, the rootedness, the absolute and absolutely contingent that makes sacred this gathering, this ground" (Apogee Journal). 

"These poems are litanies for America. Think Walt Whitman meets the Beats. We tumble through cities, watch people on the pavement, congregate beneath fig trees, hear brass bands play. At times, there is the feeling of a panoramic gaze. Car bombs go off, bees bustle, families wail, factories and dandelions spring. There is no syrupy sentimentality" (Johns Hopkins University Press).