Reading Through “A Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude”

How many things could we possibly be thankful for?  Ross Gay says that there is a whole lot that we should thank others for and recognize how special the world around the reader can be.  His poem, “A Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude,” was similar to the Thanksgiving tradition of going around a table and saying what people are thankful for as one year slowly comes to a close.  Catalogues are long-winded and can sometimes include items that seemingly do not got together, and the speaker informs the reader of the length of the poem by saying, “will you bear with me today” to prepare them for the direction that he is headed in (Gay 1).  For many people, they have a great deal to be thankful for, but they also have grievances to air and get off their chest.  The speaker gives the reader what he is giving gratitude for and then an explanation into why he needs to give thanks for these moments.

The first object that he brings to the poem is the robin outside his window which he compares to a “matador giving up on murder” which seems almost as though the speaker is giving up (15).  A matador’s one job is to vanquish or kill the bull in front of large crowds.  The sport is quite popular in Spain where they have an annual running of the bulls, but the robin is resigned to what comes next and decides not to try and change the speaker mind because a decision has been made.  The robin is where the gratitude begins and “the brass band of gratitude” begins to play for everyone present (22).  The speaker and the robin notice that the man has so much to be grateful for that he should be screaming and shouting all over town, but instead he stays and writes down this list of gratitude.  The speaker focuses on where he came from and what he had to overcome to find success even when life was hard and money was rare.

Through the poem, the speaker appears to be in a dark place where it seems as though light were unable to get through, but reader notes the gratitude as something “that makes you want to stay alive,” even when life is crazy and everything seems to fall off the rails, there can still be positive moments in life (26).  The list of things that the speaker was grateful for was long and wandering, but he focuses on the best parts where friends chose to live and family became easier to access.  He thanks people for “leaving and coming back” and for staying true and honest on the straight and narrow even when life offered so many moment to fall behind and struggle (32).  The speaker even takes a moment to thank the reader for staying and reading the poem.  The fourth wall in this poem is broken because the speaker interacts with the audience as though they were there.  The audience is invited into the poem by speaker because he wants them to feel included and understood, but also because he feels that the deserve his gratitude as well.

Also, the speaker takes time to think a number of people whether they were related to the speaker in some way or not.  He wanted everyone who played some role in this poem to be recognized for the craziness that they experienced.  He is “grateful” for friends who take a little extra time out of their day to help others and for the mess that he made between them because good friends are hard to find even for younger generations (34).