Poet and Above Ground author Clint Smith returns to discuss our April book club selection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, a poetry collection by Ross Gay. We discuss the moment of the book’s release and why it’s important within the context of the Black Lives Matter movement. We also argue that successfully engaging with a poem doesn’t require understanding what a poem is about, and we ask how much the author’s intent actually matters in poetry.
Be sure to listen to the end of today’s episode to find out what our book club pick will be for May 2023.
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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.
- Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
- Above Ground by Clint Smith
- How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith
- “Ep. 168 Embodying History with Clint Smith” (The Stacks)
- “Ep. 261 All at Once with Clint Smith” (The Stacks)
- “A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay
- A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib
- They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
- South to America by Imani Perry
- “Too Close” (Next, 2001)
- “Ep. 212 Doppelgangbanger by Cortney Lamar Charleston — The Stacks Book Club (Nate Marshall)” (The Stacks)
- Wild Beauty by Ntozake Shange
- “Ep. 56 Wild Beauty by Ntozake Shange — The Stacks Book Club (Gabrielle Civil)” (The Stacks)
- The Tradition by Jericho Brown
- “Ep. 161 The Tradition by Jericho Brown — The Stacks Book Club (Reginald Dwayne Betts)” (The Stacks)
- Doppelgangbanger by Cortney Lamar Charleston
- Gabrielle Civil
- Bad Bunny
- Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones
- Promises of Gold by José Olivarez
- Finna by Nate Marshall
- “Thank U, Next” (Arianna Grande, 2019)
- Thank U, Next by Ariana Grande
- Heavy by Kiese Laymon
- Jay Durrah
- Photo of Black Civil War Soldiers
- Counting Descent by Clint Smith
- “Ep. 160 Black People Doing Spectacular Things with Hanif Abdurraqib” (The Stacks)
- Ritz Crackers
- William Shakespeare
- Eve Ewing
- Safia Elhillo
- Elizabeth Acevedo
- Fatima Asghar
- The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
- This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris
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