New York Times bestselling author and poet Ross Gay visit SUNY Old Westbury earlier this month for the First Year Experience’s Common Reading event. Gay's book of poems, "An Unabashed Catalog of Gratitude," was the selection read in the Ethics of Engagement course this semester enjoyed by more than 500 first-year students.
At the event, Gay talked about the stories behind the poems including themes of gratitude, patience, joy, care and community, and signed copies of the books for students in attendance.
“I am always trying to make poems that feel like, and read like the thinking that goes into the process of making them,” Gay said. “What makes poems different than 'no nothing paragraphs' is that each line as I think of it represents a breath, so a poem is just an accumulation of a breaths like a body is, which to me is why poems are so interesting.”
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: “Against Which;” “Bringing the Shovel Down;” “Be Holding,” winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His first collection of essays, “The Book of Delights,” was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller. His new collection of essays, “Inciting Joy,” was just published by Algonquin in October 2022.