Bringing the Shovel Down

Ross Gay is some kind of brilliant latter-day troubadour whose poetry is shaped not only by yearning but also play and scrutiny, melancholy and intensity. I might be shocked by the bold, persistent love throughout Bringing the Shovel Down if I wasn't so wooed and transformed by it.

With masterful rhythms and multiple tones, Ross Gay gets down to bare-bones difficulty: love often tinged with grief, violence, and deception. He moves from macrocosm to microcosm, probing injustice's absurdities as well as a pining self that can't be pinned down. As with his 'little dreamer, little hard hat, little heartbeat,' Gay's poems are vitalized by the poet's ache for compassion and truth.

Blending classic craft with contemporary subject matter, poet Ross Gay's new collection packs a wallop in its urgency to communication the joys and sorows of life.

Artfully honest. Gay's poems are 'small lanterns' of 'lighting' and more.

With language wholly his own, sparkling clean and tender, Bringing the Shovel Down exposes a dark marriage of love and violence from which one cannot turn away.

Gay . . . can score a direct hit when he wants to. In Bringing the Shovel Down,he employs a variety of voices. The most effective of these . . . is the voice in which Gay shears off the 'poetic' trappings and just lets his language 'stutter and thrum," and he puts it in a poem called 'Say It.' Yes, you think: say it. He's at his best when he comes right out with it.

The language Gay brings to his poems is fresh and inviting. . . . One of the most satisfying new books I have read in a long time.

Gay's language and imagery are exquisite.