Ross Gay is assistant professor of English at Indiana University and author of the poetry collection Against Which. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Margie: The American Journal of Poetry, Ploughshares, and Sou'wester, among other publications. Gay also teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Drew University and is a Cave Canem fellow.

These poems speak out of a global consciousness as well as an individual wisdom that is bright with pity, terror, and rage, and which asks the reader to realize that she is not alone--that the grief he carries is not just his own. Gay is a poet of conscience, who echoes Tomas Transtromer's 'We do not surrender. But want peace.'-- "Jean Valentine"

Ross Gay is some kind of brilliant latter-day troubadour whose poetry is shaped not only by yearning but also play and scrutiny, melancholy and intensity. I might be shocked by the bold, persistent love throughout Bringing the Shovel Down if I wasn't so wooed and transformed by it.-- "Terrance Hayes"

With masterful rhythms and multiple tones, Ross Gay gets down to bare-bones difficulty: love often tinged with grief, violence, and deception. He moves from macrocosm to microcosm, probing injustice's absurdities as well as a pining self that can't be pinned down. As with his 'little dreamer, little hard hat, little heartbeat, ' Gay's poems are vitalized by the poet's ache for compassion and truth.-- "Ira Sadoff"

Blending classic craft with contemporary subject matter, poet Ross Gay's new collection packs a wallop in its urgency to communication the joys and sorows of life.-- "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"

Artfully honest. Gay's poems are 'small lanterns' of 'lighting' and more.-- "Philadelphia Inquirer"

With language wholly his own, sparkling clean and tender, Bringing the Shovel Down exposes a dark marriage of love and violence from which one cannot turn away.-- "ForeWord Magazine"

Gay . . . can score a direct hit when he wants to. In Bringing the Shovel Down, he employs a variety of voices. The most effective of these . . . is the voice in which Gay shears off the 'poetic' trappings and just lets his language 'stutter and thrum," and he puts it in a poem called 'Say It.' Yes, you think: say it. He's at his best when he comes right out with it.-- "New York Times "

The language Gay brings to his poems is fresh and inviting. . . . One of the most satisfying new books I have read in a long time.-- "West Branch"

Gay's language and imagery are exquisite.-- "Synecdoche"

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Pub date: 2011-01-23

Length: 80 pages