Inciting joy : essays /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From Ross Gay, the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights, comes an intimate and electrifying collection of essays about the joy that comes from connection. "BRILLIANT." --Ada Limón, U.S. poet laureate



In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life's inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy , he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it.



In "We Kin," Gay thinks about the garden (es­pecially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come in) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in "Share Your Bucket," he explores skateboard­ing's reclamation of public spaces; he considers the costs of masculinity in "Grief Suite"; and in "Through My Tears I Saw," he recognizes what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying.



In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love?



Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive, and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive.



"A gift that's meant to be shared . . . [This book] inspires us to look beyond the miseries of our era to envision a more welcoming future."― The Washington Post

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• The First Incitement (p. 1)
• Through My Tears I Saw (Death: The Second Incitement) (p. 11)
• We Kin (The Garden: The Third Incitement) (p. 28)
• Out of Time (Time: The Fourth Incitement) (p. 43)
• Share Your Bucket! (Skateboarding: The Fifth Incitement) (p. 57)
• Baby, This Might Be You, (Laughter: The Sixth Incitement) (p. 66)
• (Dis)alienation Machinery (Losing Your Phone: The Seventh Incitement) (p. 82)
• Free Fruit for All! (The Orchard: The Eighth Incitement) (p. 94)
• Insurgent Hoop (Pickup Basketball: The Ninth Incitement) (p. 112)
• How Big the Boat (The Cover: The Tenth Incitement) (p. 123)
• Dispatch from the Ruins (School: The Eleventh Incitement) (p. 137)
• Went Free (Dancing: The Twelfth Incitement) (p. 171)
• Grief Suite (Failing Apart: The Thirteenth Incitement) (p. 176)
• Oh, My Heart (Gratitude: The Fourteenth Incitement) (p. 230)
• Acknowledgments (p. 246)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet Gay follows The Book of Delights with an intimate collection of essays exploring joy, gratitude, and resistance. Narrating his own work, Gay invites listeners on a journey through 12 discursive essays (he notes that he is a "fan of digression"), dwelling on everything from football and couple's therapy to gardening, grieving, and more. Some of Gay's essays seem light--tenderly watching sunflower seedlings progress from vulnerable to towering, or the sweet revels of a chipmunk. Others, such as Gay's memories of his father who died from cancer in 2004, recognize that sorrow, grief, and despair are ever-present, and in fact that coming together in these moments is essential to inciting joy. His is not a recommendation to forget or fix the tough parts of life, but an exhortation to dig in. As he notes, "Grief is not gotten over, it's gotten into." Gay's narration taps into the rhythm of the book--messy, warm, deliciously dwelling on words, phrases, and thoughts. VERDICT This exquisitely narrated collection of essays allows listeners to feel the poetry running throughout. Brimming with compassion and generosity, this is an audiobook to be savored.--Sarah Hashimoto

Publishers Weekly Review

Poet Gay (The Book of Delights) examines in this stunning collection how joy deepens when accompanied by grief, fear, and loss. In "Joy and Losing Your Phone," he describes relying on the help of strangers; "Joy and Death" is a reflection on losing his father to cancer; "Joy and Time" covers the privilege of not being "on the clock"; and in "Joy and Laughter," he observes that "one of laughter's qualities is that it can draw us together." Gay gracefully turns from lighter pleasures (imagining a book about great album covers, for instance) to confronting cruelties, such as racist violence or the "brutal economy" of capitalism. "Grief Codex," the longest and most intricate essay, touches on football, toxic masculinity, couples therapy, and grief: "we might always be holding each other through our falling," Gay concludes, positing that "holding each other through the sorrow" is one definition of joy. Gay's curiosity is present on every page ("I am a fan of the digression," he writes) and his precise yet playful prose sparkles: a friend wears "a goldfinch of a grin," while a mall parking lot "away from the cast even of the aged streetlights" is a safe space. This resonant, vivid meditation shouldn't be missed. Agent: Liza Dawson, Liza Dawson Assoc. (Oct.)

Booklist Review

Gay's (The Book of Delights, 2019) poetically influenced prose is nothing short of joyful. Blending the serious and the playful, this essay collection incites joy with writings about a wide range of actions and places: dancing, orchards, teaching, skateboarding, basketball courts, technology's absence, death, authentic gratitude, and more. Also wide-ranging is Gay's style, containing long, clause-filled sentences that make connections and build bridges. Footnotes deepen and parentheticals expand, and Gay frequently offers humorous self-awareness. Talking to the reader about a joke he just made: "You know I know it's horrible, right?" Talking to himself about the essay he just started: "Am I really going to start talk about 'masculinity' by talking about football?" For Gay, joy is also incited by courage and honesty; his essays have a through line of offering the deeply personal and speaking truth to power. A standout example, "Dispatch from the Ruins," lays bare the negligible relationship between graded "outcomes" and actual learning. Gay's pedagogy, explained in detail, disrupts the systems that are baseline incongruent with joy, as does his writing, in every sentence.

Kirkus Book Review

A prizewinning poet's thoughts about grief, gratitude, and happiness. In a natural follow-up to his previous collection, The Book of Delights, Gay, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude, ruminates about joy in a warm, candid memoir composed of 12 essays. In prose that veers between breezy and soulful, the author reflects on a wide range of topics, including basketball, dancing, skateboarding, couples' therapy, music, masculinity, and his father's cancer. As a biracial man, he has much to say about race and racism. For Gay, cultivating joy involves mindful observation. Once, watching a chipmunk's antics, he wondered, "among other things, how many real-life chipmunks scaling sheer limestone walls do we miss when we're watching videos on our cellular telephones of chipmunks falling off walls?" Joy also emerges from "the mycelial threads connecting us, the lustrous web." The author praises a community orchard, which has created "a matrix of connection, of care, that exists not only in the here and now, but comes to us from the past and extends forward into the future." As a creative writing teacher, Gay rejects the workshop format, where students try to "fix" a classmate's poem. His teaching encourages "unfixing work together--where we hold each other, and witness each other, through our unfixing," sensitive to each student's reality. He seeks to break through academic "conventions and boundaries" to make a human--and humane--connection: "you ask, after someone shares a sort of upsetting and nervous-making poem, are you ok? Or someone, missing class sends a doctor's note and an x-ray of their broken bone as double proof, to which you reply: no need, I believe you." For Gay, community opens a path to joy. Even in grief, "grieving, or the griever, consciously or not, connects to all of grief, and to all grievers." A pleasingly digressive and intimate memoir in essays. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights: Essays and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Be Holding won the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. He is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. Gay has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.