Ross Gay

"I have inherited this sense that seriousness does not necessarily go with grief, or seriousness does not necessarily go with joy, which to me is not glee, actually. Joy is this very complex, full, rig…"

"I was definitely feeling alienated in various ways, and feeling some unarticulated rage and sorrow about a number of things. Once I got introduced to the right poems, I became aware of maybe a way to …"

"I feel like over the years, I’ve become more invested in a kind of written spoken voice. And connected to that, that I’m interested in the audience in a different way than I was before. I’m interested…"

"One is that I’m the first reader, and so I’m always writing these poems to myself, and my self — my self as a reader — is someone who wants to be transformed in the process of reading poems. I don’t w…"