Gay’s pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight. Because Gay is a poet, it’s hardly a stretch to read his prose as versifying, and an attentive reader will notice moments of overlap. The Book of Delights is about our connection to the world, to each other, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. To catalogue delights and to delight in them at some length, as Gay does, shines a light on otherwise private, intimate moments, and the book that collects this catalogue has the feel of a devotional poem.

And more than any other subject, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world - his garden, the flowers in the sidewalk, the birds, the bees, the mushrooms, the trees. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: the way Botan Rice Candy wrappers melt in your mouth, the volunteer crossing guard with a pronounced tremor whom he imagines as a kind of boat-woman escorting pedestrians across the River Styx, a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, pickup basketball games, the silent nod of acknowledgment between black people. His is a meditation on delight that takes a clear-eyed view of the complexities, even the terrors, in his life, including living in America as a black man the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture the loss of those he loves.

Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying book of essays - some as short as a paragraph some as long as five pages - that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives. The winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyric essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders.

Ross gay's the book of delights