Typewriter interview with Ross Gay

10 questions for the poet, essayist, and student of joy

Feb 25, 2025

∙ Paid

Hey y’all,

Ross Gay is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Book of Delights and other books of essays and poetry. Just yesterday he started a newsletter called Mondays Are Free in which he’ll be sending out writing prompts Monday-Friday for a whole year. This interview was conducted via our typewriters and the United States Postal Service. (You’ll find a full-text transcription with a ton of links to explore in the P.S. below.)

I really, really like essays written by poets. (Yours included.) Why do you think poets make such great essayists? Who are some of your favorite poets who write essays? I wonder if there are things that poets learn by considering the line or different aspects of form that maybe leds itself to something essayistic. Or what I often think of as essayistic --meandering, jumpy, digressive, weird. Lyric. Maybe there's a clue in some of our poets whose prose and poetry are sometimes hard to tell apart, which I love. Too Derricotte for instance. Simone White. Renee Gladden. CD Wright. Anne Waldman. That's a few. Yeah, something about a voice that poetry might teach you? (My o is fussy.) Jena Osman is another whose work I love, poemessay things. Etc.

AK: Describe a perfect day in Bloomington, Indiana. Among the perfect days, there would probably be food from the garden, a walk, some visiting with someone I bumped into, a meal with a beloved or some beloveds, basketball, reading, music. Another perfect day might be writing all day. Another one might be a couple classes, some beautiful presentations in those classes, the bike ride home real lolly-gaggy. Another one might be cruising around all day harvesting serviceberries. Another one will be when we shell our beans. Oh, a coffee, and a nice conversation with who gives it to me. Yes, lallygagging, visiting, getting waylaid, teaming up or chipping in on something, sharing food, tooling around in the garden OFF THE CLOCK. Jackshit to do is a perfect day too.

AK: A favorite equation of mine is the ordinary + extra attention = the extraordinary. Do you have any advice to people who want to pay more attention to their lives? RG: I think less internet is good advice. Also, like foul shots or Ollies, or listening or whistling: practice. Also, writing stuff I notice helps me I think. It's a version of pointing, writing is. Pointing and thinking, to be more precise. Preciser still: wondering!

What are some of the most important things you've learned about teaching? What do you hope will happen in your classroom? Do you like teaching? I love teaching, and have especially come to love it the more i'm able to remember that we're gathered not to evaluate or judge or be better than one another, but to try to make stuff, and maybe to help each other understand or even just observe what we've made. So, to listen and watch and pay attention. That itself is kind of wonderful and useful and loving, it seems to me. I'm learning this. A classroom as a place where we lovingly observe each other learning how to do things, which means too not knowing how to do things. Also, and this feels very good, I've learned that a lot of teaching, maybe all of it, is sharing what you love, and maybe asking others to do the same. Which means, too, wondering together about what we love. When teaching or class is that, I love it.

John Waters says he has "youth spies" that keep him up-to-date on contemporary culture. Do you have any "youth spies"? Hmm, I don't think of them as spies, but I'm around younger people a lot as a teacher and they say a lot of shit i dont understand, and when i ask what that means they are kind enough almost always to tell me. Also, honestly, I'm more interested in elderly spies. I want to know what they know, or are thinking about.

Do you have any hobbies? (The more trivial the better, IMO.) Do you collect anything? I have a few typewriters. I could and maybe might make them a hobby. I mess around with letterpress stuff. I was rollerskating last year and could see getting way into that. Some people might say i collect kettle bells. Answering this i realize i dont quite know what makes something a hobby. I like to draw. I do love to find handwritten things on the ground, i have a few of those. I kind of collect records because i inherited records and so keep them. I somehow have three skateboards which when i ride them now feels like a hobby but when i skated back when it was a vocation.

I'm a big fan of "silly rituals." (I 'smoke' a cigarette pencil when Im writing.) What's the most embarrasing thing you do when you're working? Oh I think I really believe in lucky notebooks, which i guess i collect too, notebooks hoping they're lucky. I guess some people might find it embarrassing to stay in your bed working on sentences, whether or not it's a ritual (it's not). The notebook thing maybe the most. Actually, I don't think that's silly or embarrassing! Let me think.

What's your relationship to music? Do you sing? Play an instrument? What's a song you can't stop listening to? I love music, and I love to sing. I have probably listened to Aretha Franklin's "Mary Don't You Weep" most recently. Oh, and Sheila E's "Glamorous Life" and Janet Jackson's "Pleasure Principal." And this live Peter Gabriel record and the first two De La Soul records. Though all on CDs, which maybe I collect. I don't have a lot of cds, and the ones i have i love and listen to a lot.

What do you do for exercise? Do you detect any mental, emotional, or spiritual benefits? I like to play basketball. I also swing kettlebells and jump rope and run and stuff. Oh i feel much happier, more relaxed and springy when i do it. I also like practicing stuff, and those things are good for that. Some days 100 left handed finishes from different places on the court, just learning how to do it better feels good. Especially when I manage not to call myself a fuckin asshole for missing, etc. Also, I do find that after a hard workout that i could and sometimes do drop into a very calm meditation or meditation-almost. Also, significantly, exercise and aging are interesting to me, like learning how to tend to ones body and enjoy ones body and get a kick out of onesbody--by ones i mear mine, i mean my--rather than punishing my body. Its fun to have fun to have fun.

(a transcription of the complete list of all these names with links is in the P.S.)

Big thanks to Ross for being the sixth victim in this series of typewriter interviews.

Check out his books and brand-new newsletter Mondays Are Free.

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