Alyssa VanPelt-Cathcart, Staff Writer
Ross Gay is Hartwick’s Common Read guest for Fall 2024 with his collection of essayettes, The Book of Delights, as the Common Read book. Gay has published other books that feature essays such as Inciting Joy (2022) and The Book of (More) Delights (2023). His reading and presentation were on October 18th, 2024, in Slade Theater in Yager Hall at Hartwick College. Tessa Yang hosted the Common Read event with co-host Bradley J. Fest. Both Dr. Fest and Yang are both Associate Professors at Hartwick through the English Department. They are both instrumental in organizing the events for the festival, so a much appreciated thank you goes out to them for bringing such inspiring authors to Oneonta. Yang was a student at the University of Indiana for her MFA where Gay taught as a professor, and although she never had Gay as a teacher, she is deeply inspired by him and his work. After Yang’s touching appraisal of Gay, she welcomed him to the stage.
Gay read a selection of poems and essayettes. One poem, “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian,” has a humorous tone to bring awareness of cultural divides and building community despite a language barrier. This poem plays into a few of Gay’s expressed delights from the Common Read book: being tall and sharing fruit with strangers. Another poem, “Prayer for My Unborn Niece or Nephew,” brings the audience to a somber as it reflects on the benefit to being in the United States. The benefit of not having to be afraid of loved ones dying of war crimes like those living, trapped, in Gaza.
Gay explains in the Q & A following the readings that writing teaches to reflect and for him, he learns something new about himself regarding his relationships. It could be his relationship to himself, family, sorrow, or memories. He used a metaphor to explain the feeling of writing: “writing feels like chasing a creature, oftentimes that creature is yourself.” In his essayette, Spoon, from his second book of delights, he reflects on the loss of his friend. He explained that Spoon was supposed to be about a spoon and become a metaphor, but there could not be a metaphor for the recollection of his friend when he sees a spoon. Gay would elaborate, paraphrasing, “poems can’t entirely let you escape.”
When asked why he began writing, he shared that he was struggling in college, to the point where he may lose his athletic scholarship if he does not pull himself up. In that, he explained how he became inspired by an assignment to do a presentation on a poet and their set of poetry. Through this, he began reading poetry, he stated, simply, “someone shows me something they loved, and I loved it too.” To that he says, makes a good teacher, too.
There is a modest elegancy to Gay through his unabashed self when teasing the ASL interpreter, his list of silly nicknames, and his humanity through his writing. Hartwick has done well with their selection for this semester’s Common Read author.
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