![]() ![]() “.tree which everyone knows/cannot grow this far north.” Only it does. This particular fig unites people in a rapturous Babette’s Feast-of-a-party, bringing neighbors and passersby together to partake of near mystical fruit from a ![]() He opens with “To a Fig Tree on 9th and Christian” in Philadelphia, a city that doesn’t always deliver on the brotherly love aspect for which it is named, on a street that is Christian in more ways than one. ![]() Gay’s poems are left-hand justified, often composed of one rambling rose of a sentence that blooms gracefully across the pages, some with punctuation, others without, like single and double-flowering varietals. This is a garden of unrestrained pigment that grabs the reader at the gate with an invitation to meander the paths within. ![]() The cover art provides a hint of the tenor of work to be found within: riotous color, dripping next to impressionistic strokes of what could possibly be canna, stock, foxglove, and roses. Ross Gay is a professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, as well as a poet and gardener. There is lightness and generosity in these pages, like a long-needed exhalation when spring comes after a long winter. In his third volume of poetry, he writes of gardens with their seasons of fruition, hibernation, loss, and rebirth. Reading Ross Gay’s work is reason for exhilaration. Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press (Pitt Poetry Series), 2015 ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |