Ross Gay: Poetry Literary Elements

The poem The Truth is written from the first-person perspective and gives the speaker's point of view on an older employee preparing a burger.

The poem Again is written in un-rhymed couplets, apart from the last line, which stands alone. The entire poem is one long sentence, like a flow of consciousness and thought.

In the poem Marionette, the puppet is described using the simile 'arms flung like a flamingo's wing,' followed by the metaphor 'his sashay a flame's undulation.'

The poem Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude uses alliteration in this description 'tamped by a baby barefoot / with a bow hanging in her hair / biting her lip in her joyous work.' This encapsulates the bumbling nature of the child.

In the poem Opera Singer, the poet refers to his own 'run-on simile, which means only to say: / I'm sad. And everyone knows what that means.' This makes his long 'run-on simile,' ironic, as if a satiric choice or an over-exaggerated effort to express his grief.

Wedding Song is a love poem and a poem about observing love.

The setting of the poem Pulled Over in Short Hills, NJ, 8:00 AM is as it says in the title.

The tone of the poem Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is thankful and melancholic in a way.

The protagonist of ;Poem to my Child, If ever you shall be,' is the poet, speaking to a future child.

The conflict in the poem Pulled Over in Short Hills, NJ, 8:00am, although not completely explicit, is between the protagonist an their own feelings, between the protagonist and the police and between the protagonist and racial prejudices perhaps.

The climax of the poem Pulled Over in Short Hills, NJ, 8:00am is the end lines 'he sees, / and something happens.'

Saying to the unborn child in 'Poem to My Child, If Ever You Should Be,' that 'You'll swim under that bridge if it comes,' is a play on a common cliched saying - to cross that bridge when you come to it - and foreshadows the process of making a baby with a woman, if the child is to be born.

In the poem Sorrow is Not my Name, the line 'something like two million naturally occurring sweet things,' could be an understatement.

In the poem Again, the poet alludes to Tom and Jerry, which is a cartoon TV show about a cat and a mouse.

The love in the act of a 'goldfinch kissing / a sunflower,' represents love in general and the feeling it gives one observing it, as stated at the end of the poem.

In the poem Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, the 'crocuses' are personified as they 'flaunted their upturned skirts,' indicating the movement of the flower.

In the poem Marionette, when the puppet show is finished, the laying down of the marionette is described like a death scene in, 'the doll sprawls in a crippled collapse,' which is also emphasized by the cutting alliteration, making this ending to the show very dramatic.

In the poem Opera Singer, the poet describes his 'heart,' as 'an anvil / dragging from my neck as I swim / through choppy waters swollen with the putrid corpses of hippos,' which is an exaggerated description of his feelings of grief. The poet recognizes this hyperbole though, naming it a 'run-on simile.'

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