Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

Written in an open style without a specific meter and rhyme, “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” is made up of 281 lines divided into 16 stanzas. The line lengths vary as do the stanza length. The lines are often enjambed, or a break in the thought of a line without any punctuation, flowing quickly from one line to the next to continue Gay’s effusive thoughts. Gay told Breakwater Review that his intention with the poem was to create “the feeling of a thing falling from my mind or mouth. You know, making a poem that seems kind of like how the mind works, veering and tripping and backing up and falling” (Sykora, Bob. “Interview with Ross Gay,” Breakwater, 2016). Each stanza generally centers on a subject or linked subjects but often refers to earlier images in the poem (or earlier poems that appear in Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, the collection). As indicated by Gay’s intention, the stanzas are linked by the association either of a word and/or phrase, or the repeated use of an image. For example, the sixth stanza ends with “the flock of geese overhead” (Line 125) while the seventh begins with “the quick and gentle flocking / of men” (Line 126-127).