Opera Singer

One of my favorite poems in Ross Gay's Bringing the Shovel Down is "Opera Singer", which illustrates a man following his happiness, literally, following the sound of it through the streets. This poem I think best shows Gay's skill with imagery with lines like, "Today my heart is so goddamned fat with grief / that I've begun hauling it in a wheelbarrow." and "delicately rolled r's like a hummingbird fluttering the tongue".

Although this is not the exact first moment in the book where the tone is no longer the darker, more grim tone the first half of the book had, this poem clearly possesses the hopeful spirit that took root in the second half of the book. Here, his lack of punctuation is advantageous as we discussed before, because the way his words read coincides with his frantic run toward joy. The way it is written as a run, with details like the women's breathing, running into a mulberry branch ("across my face / staining it purple and looking, now, like a mad warrior of glee") and the parade of kids running barefoot behind you. It is just so...real, the clumsiness and I feel the branch on my face and I start to breathe irregularly--and the poem works. At the end I have this relief, because I feel like I have really reached a destination, to this "women in slippers and a floral housedress". My reward then is, "heaven sailing from her mouth and all the fish in the sea / and giraffes saunter and sugar in my tea and the forgotten angles / of love and every name of the unborn and dead" (the last one throws me a bit, but I think the memories are a good thing).

The last line is perfect to me, though I am not sure how I want to read it; I can't choose: "let me stop here / and tell you I said thank you." Who is the you? Me, the reader? Some other? Who did he say thank you to? The women singing opera? Me for running alongside him? Some third party like God for giving him this happiness? Clarity at this particular spot isn't important, I don't think. Gratitude is just nice to give, and to be grateful of something means you have something worth giving thanks. Cheesy? Possibly.


I change my mind; this is my favorite of his poems.