Analysis of Thank You



If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden's dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.


Scheme ABCCDEFEGHIJKK
Poetic Form
Metre 11101110 010010110 01011100111 11011010111 1111111 0111111 111111 111011011 11001111 0101101 0101111 10101010 11011 11
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 475
Words 92
Sentences 7
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 369
Words per stanza (avg) 88
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Written on 2006

Submitted by Drone232 on April 28, 2022

Modified on April 30, 2023

28 sec read
108

Ross Gay

Ross Gay was born in Youngstown, Ohio. He earned a BA from Lafayette College, an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and a PhD in English from Temple University. He is the author of Be Holding (2020); Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award and a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award; Bringing the Shovel Down (2011); and Against Which (2006). He has also published an essay collection, The Book of Delights (2019). Gay is the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens (2014), and with Richard Wehrenberg, Jr., River (2014). His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Cave Canem, and the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. more…

All Ross Gay poems | Ross Gay Books

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