Ross Gay's poetry has a very personal, mostly uplifting but also serious style. The following summary of three exemplary poems "Love, I'm done with you", "Opera Singer" and "Poem to My Child, if ever you shall be" can be considered good examples of the thematic area Gay is dealing with.
Love, I'm done with you
The poem starts with the narrator directly addressing the audience with three questions that address uncomfortable situations. The first two take general positive items, namely a cosy pyjama and a home cooked meal and distort their positive association, by either the feeling of a noose around ones neck or the image of vomiting. The third, blood on your feet, paints a picture of inescapable discomfort.
From this rather uncomfortable start the narrator directly confronts love. Personifying this high emotion, the poem accuses love for asking too much. The image of a stinky breath after not brushing ones teeth for a few days is taken as the leitmotif in this poem. The narrator states that once he followed love's every word, but now the magic is gone.
The last part of the poem is a long list of metaphors that describe how love has a positive outside but is rather rotten on the inside. The poem ends with the reiteration of the leitmotif, love's stinky breath, and the narrator officially breaking up with it.
Opera Singer
The poem starts with the narrator confiding into the reader about his grief. He uses a series of similes to describe how bad he feels. Having established this feeling of doom and gloom, the story continues down a street, towards a coffee house. At this point no hope for any positivity is left.
Then suddenly, the narrator hears a voice, a woman singing opera with a recording. The unknown sounds inspire more similes and metaphors, including winged children. The narrator speeds up, jogs towards the singer. The poem ends with a description of an old woman painting a doorway while singing. Again addressing the audience, the narrator breaks in the highly metaphorical style and states that he thanked the woman for lifting his spirits.
Poem to my Child, if ever you shall be
The poem, written in paired lines, is indeed a long question towards this hypothetical child. It starts out with the narrator addressing the future child within his groin. The next part gives two options to the child, either to curse the father for bringing it into this broken world or to stand up and scream and fight for the less fortunate.
The next part is a long metaphor of the future child living inside the father, being part of his heartbeat and looking out at the world through his eyes. This is followed by a description of the metaphorical mother and her beautiful voice and fiery temper.
This journey through the parents body is abruptly ended with a "who knows". In the final part, the narrator paints a picture of the child interacting with the natural world, with a flower and some farm animals. The poem is ended with a very positive emotion towards the child and the words "little best of me".
