20 pages • 40 minutes read
Ross GayCatalog of Unabashed Gratitude
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Bees, Tea, and Honey
To a gardener, “bees” (Line 88) are essential since they pollinate what successfully grows. When Gay discovers “two or three dead / fist-sized clutches of bees” (Lines 87-88), his grief is hard-hitting. However, these insects leave a legacy. Although these “bees” (Line 88) didn’t make it, they’ve left behind their “honey” (Line 96) along with any plants they were able to aid. Gay wants the reader to see this as a metaphor for life’s experiences as he refers to it in when he gives the “dear reader” (Line 104) a “cup of tea” (Line 107). He notes in particular that he “[has] spooned honey into it” (Line 107). Like tea, life can have a bitter taste. It is filled with the death of the things we love, from cherished items to essential people. Gay knows this and offers it up anyway, both the eerie “quiet [that] roved / the beehive” (Lines 85-86) postmortem and the still “glacial shine” (Line 97) of the bright world. He, like we should, “spooned honey into” (Line 107) that which is bitter, making a concentrated effort to highlight sweetness despite, or because of, inevitable tragedy.
Love with Elephants
In stanza seven, Gay notes “my love” (Line 110) and her response to him as he confronts the death of his “bees” (Line 88). Rather than be frightened of his “falling down to cry” (Line 96), she “reaches” (Line 115) out to him. Their love, he realizes is so vast it “hurts sometimes” (Line 116). Then, to clarify it is not all seriousness, he reflects how this woman once “misremembered elephants / in one of my poems” (Lines 117-118),), but this only makes him imaginatively conjure them up. Suddenly, they appear “garlanded” (Line 119) with flowers, making their noisy trek “down to the river” (Line 120), where the water “bends around [their] / solemn trunk[s]” (122-123) and “polish[es] stones,” smoothing hard surfaces. This image solidifies Gay’s feelings toward love’s fleeting nature—not because of betrayal but death. Later, when he compares his heart to that of an “elephant screaming / at the bones of its dead” (Lines 243-244), the symbolic association to this woman who named his fictious “elephants” (Line 117) is apparent. We know as happy as their current relationship might be, his heart would “scream” (Line 243) if she were to leave him or he her through death or another circumstance. Their love is made richer by its association with potential loss.
Joy as Basketball
One of the many anecdotes included in the poem is about a pick-up game of basketball. Gay and two other “oldheads” (Line 134) play a game with “some runny-nosed kids” (Line 135) and leave them in “shambles” (Line 136). This is so unexpectedly glorious, given that the much younger players probably have more strength and agility, that the 61-year-old victor “rip[s] off his shirt” (Line 139) and “holler[s] at the kids to admire the pacemaker’s scar” (Line 140). A “pacemaker” (Line 140) is an electrical device implanted into the chest, often after a cardiac event, by a surgical procedure to control the heartbeat. That the man has survived near-death is indicated by his “[throwing] punches at the gods” (Line 139). The pace of basketball is quick and would in most cases cause a rapid heartbeat. That the victor is reveling is his rebound is indicated by his actions post-win as well as the “scar / grinning across his chest” (Line 141). This shows how even times of worry (the risk of surgical procedure) can later be changed into abundance (the device allows the man to continue to engage in what he loves). Gay notes he too is grateful for “the glad accordion’s wheeze / in the chest” (Lines 142-143) and through this metaphor implies that the game of life, like basketball, is replete with losses but also unexpected wins.
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By Ross Gay
