Vegetal Delights: The Phytopoetics of Ross Gay

This article explores the poetics at work in Black American poet Ross Gay’s contemporary two-volume Book of Delights (2019 and 2023). I argue that his delights are phytopoetic, which describes moments when plants impact the human imagination and, by extension, shape human culture and aesthetic production, such as literary texts. Such phytopoetic processes are moments of co-creation, involving plants both as engaged in poietic making and in the shaping of the poetics of a given text. By examining patterns of form in Gay’s prose and close reading some of his delights that center on plants, this article unfolds Gay’s specific phytopoetics and shows that the delights are a genre that operates on plant time: seasonal, cyclical, and rooted in growth. As such, the genre slows down the reader and draws attention to the delight found in small, everyday encounters with plants and the world around us, even in the midst of overwhelming crises.