With the one-year anniversary of hunkering down in our houses approaching, it’s easy to forget about the beauty of the natural world that we still have access to. Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil are here to remind us.
Poets Gay and Nezhukumatathi will discuss their essay collections—The Book of Delights and World of Wonders, respectively—during a book festival event called O Wondrous World!
Nezhukumatathil, whose essays are complemented with gorgeous color illustrations, draws many parallels between the chosen flora and fauna and her own life, whether comparing the defense mechanism of the touch-me-not to her own rejection of sexual predators or comparing her family to a pod of narwhals. But she is also content to simply admire nature’s creations: “The bibliography of the firefly is a tender and electric dress.”
Gay’s collection of 102 essays ranges from eating a tomato on a plane to his impressive list of nicknames for himself—but each piece deals in delight. And much of this delight focuses on nature, thanks to Gay’s affinity for gardening, a habit he shares with Nezhukumatathil. Gay has this to say about the relationships between their works:
“I think I’ve learned from Aimee so much about staying focused (as much as I do) on what I’m trying to celebrate and study, not ignoring sorrow, never that, but that the training and the practice is to study what you love, if you can, which we can help each other with, and which is one of the ways we care for the world.”—Dan Goff
Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil will discuss the joys of the nature at a panel entitled O Wondrous World! on March 22 at noon.