The Book of (More) Delights

Starred review from July 1, 2023
In this follow-up toThe Book of Delights, the esteemed poet catalogs more quiet pleasures and causes for gratitude. Gay adheres to the same guidelines he followed in the previous volume: "write them daily, write them quickly, and write them by hand." The first piece, of 81, opens, "Well, here we are again: this time, my forty-seventh birthday," and describes a "bounty of delights" that he and his partner, Stephanie, have found in a rented Vermont cabin--e.g., the "forageable bounty" of apples. The following entry pays tribute to his friend Walt on his birthday: "I have needed to be--we need to be--believed in. Which, in a certain kind of way, is like being birthed. And just like his gummy bears and hockey sticks, I guess I'm taking Walt's birthday. Because when Walt was born, so too was I." The author offers steadfast company in his optimistic, accessible vignettes and insights about easily overlooked quotidian life. The essays are short, roughly three pages, and it's a credit to Gay's tone that he can captivate readers while writing about, for instance, "three truly beautiful spoons," the pleasure of petting his cat, his annual garlic planting ("garlic's your tiny professor of faith, your pungent don of gratitude") and, in a separate piece, garlic harvesting. His sense of wonder at watching an NPR Tiny Desk Concert featuring El DeBarge leads him to this reflection on an Aretha Franklin cover: "She lets it be known, this is for the benefit of you who don't believe." Gay closes with an essay sharing the same name as the first, "My Birthday, Again," in which the author writes, "I've completed another year of delights. Or maybe I should say another year of delights has completed me." Keenly observed and delivered with deftness, these essays are a testament to the artfulness of attention and everyday joy.

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Starred review from August 1, 2023
Poet, essayist, and author of The Book of Delights (2019), Gay returns post-pandemic with another startling, sensuous collection of miniature essays about some "fleeting sweetnesses" that he savored over the course of a year, beginning with his birthday in August of 2021. In sinuous, stream-of-consciousness prose, he zooms in to luxuriate in an encounter with a small dog or the "reprieve from unhugging" after many socially distant months and then zooms out to place those encounters in a wider context. As before, many of the delights Gay experiences have to do with the natural world: an unexpectedly bountiful crop of sweet potatoes in the backyard or a squirrel determinedly munching a neighbor's pumpkin. Sappy, however, Gay is not. Many of these delights are tempered with sadness, as when the author attends his aunt's funeral or deals with the challenges of "being a non-white person in mostly white spaces." But again and again, joy wins out over despair as Gay pays tribute to a world of people "bumbling, flailing, hurting, failing, changing."

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 18, 2023
Poet Gay once again engages in a daily “delight practice” in the enchanting encore to The Book of Delights. In 81 brief essays, Gay turns his perpetually wonder-struck eye on the people and places around him, constructing an elaborate ode to the art of close attention. For example, in “The Lady in the Tree,” he spins a trip to the laundromat into a hallucinatory romp; in “Dream Dancing,” he falls into a synergistic dance with young people in a park; and in “One Million Kisses,” he overcomes his reservations about small dogs by caring for his mother-in-law’s “pipsqueak pup.” Through it all, Gay’s lyrical, stream-of-consciousness style—which always remains on the right side of saccharine (“Before you go there,” he addresses the reader, “I’m not being optimistic. I’m just paying attention”)—lends potentially mundane subject matter, such as stopping for lunch on a road trip or observing neighborhood garden gnomes, a shimmering, near-magical quality. These unforgettable vignettes will enhance readers’ appreciation for their own surroundings. Agent: Liza Dawson, Liza Dawson Assoc.