On being ross gay
Seattle Arts and Lectures
Next on the SAL Podcast: Ross Gay
April 9,
In our latest episode of SAL/on air, our literary podcast featuring talks from across Seattle Arts & Lectures’ thirty years, we hear from poet Ross Gay.
In a time appreciate this, where execute you look to for joy? In an episode of Krista Tippett’s podcast, On Being, poet Ross Gay recently said, “It is joy by which the labor that will make the life that I want, possible. It is not at all puzzling to me that bliss is possible in the midst of difficulty.”
Besides being a disciple of pleasure, Ross Gay is a gardener, a painter, a professor, a basketball player, and a founding member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a free-fruit-for-all non-profit focused on meal, justice, and happiness. He is also the author of three collections of poetry.
The title poem in his most recent, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, is a long piece which, Ross told the Los Angeles Times, was begun as a “way to publicly visualize what it means for a person to be adamantly in love with his life. I wanted to recognize joy as a fundamental aspect of
Seattle Arts and Lectures
Ross Gay
In a time like this, where do you watch to for joy? In a recent episode of Krista Tippett’s podcast, On Being, poet Ross Same-sex attracted said, “It is bliss by which the labor that will make the life that I long, possible. It is not at all puzzling to me that joy is possible in the midst of difficulty.”
Besides being a disciple of joy, Ross Gay is a gardener, a painter, a professor, a basketball player, and a founding member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a free-fruit-for-all non-profit focused on food, justice, and joy. He is the author of three collections of poetry. The title poem in his most recent, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, is a extended piece which, Gay told the Los Angeles Times, was begun as a “way to publicly visualize what it means for a person to be adamantly in love with his life. I wanted to realize joy as a fundamental aspect of our lives and apply it as a discipline.”
Read a full transcript of Gay&#;s reading here.
Season Two
Air Date April 9,
Audio from lecture: Ross Gay
Recorded February 7,
at McCaw
In our world of so much suffering, it can feel firm or wrong to invoke the word "joy." Yet joy has been one of the most insistent, recurrent rallying cries in almost every life-giving conversation that Krista has had across recent months and years, even and especially with people on the front lines of humanity's struggles.
Ross Gay helps illuminate this paradox and turn it into a muscle.
We are good at fighting, as he puts it, and not as good at holding in our imaginations what is to be adored and preserved and exalted — advocating for what we love, for what we find beautiful and necessary. But without this, he says, we cannot speak meaningfully even about our longings for a more just world, a more whole existence for all. To comprehend that we are all suffering — and so to exercise 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 an everyday spiritual discipline of practicing delight and cultivating joy.
Ross Queer is a poet, essayist, instructor, a