Sorrow Is Not My Name

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2011

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Mortality and Death

Gay’s “Sorrow Is Not My Name” directly responds to Gwendolyn Brooks’s “To the Young Who Want to Die,” taking up her cry to live life vibrantly and fully, rather than succumb to violence and death. Gay acknowledges that death is looming and ever-present, writing about the “brink” and the “florid, deep sleep” (Lines 1-2) in the initial lines of the poem. He knows that dark thoughts about death’s omnipresence and its inevitability exert a strong “pull” (Line 1), but he would rather focus on the sensations of joy and gratitude. The poem implies that the possibility of death makes life sweeter, demonstrating the juxtaposition in the image of the vulture: It is the “sickle of his beak” (Line 7)—the very thing that connects this bird to our personification of death—that the speaker finds aesthetically appealing, underscoring how mortality informs his understanding of beauty. The speaker and the vulture experience a kind of communion, as the bird “nod[s] his red, grizzled head” (Line 5) at the speaker, who admires it appreciatively, recognizing the freedom and loveliness in the bird’s feathers and movements. The contrast between the vulture’s proximity to death and its capacity for flight creates a complex image in which the speaker finds joy.

The speaker returns to images of death in the poem’s final third, referring to “The long night, / the skeleton in the mirror” (Lines 17-18). He creates a conversation with the reader, moving back and forth between acknowledgements of mortality and joyful images and language. Ultimately, the poem ends on a line consciously choosing life: “My color’s green. I’m spring” (Line 23), using the color and season most associated with rebirth and again returning to the idea of perfect timing from the third line.

The Power of Language

Gay emphasizes the role language has in creating joy, identifying its capacity for generosity and physical impact. When he writes about the “million naturally occurring sweet things, / some with names so generous as to kick / the steel from my knees” (Lines 12-15), the adjective “generous” sticks out—it is not commonly used to describe names. Not only do the names of the “sweet things” have this ability to bestow gifts on the speaker, but they can also force his knees to buckle—abilities that abstract concepts do not generally possess. By anthropomorphizing language in this way, Gay gives it a code of values. Language, a human construction, has much to offer the reader and the speaker of the poem, giving sounds textures that are pleasurable for their own sake, an additional layer of joy atop an already sweet thing.

Gay’s items with generous names—“Agave, persimmon, / stick ball, the purple okra” (Lines 15-16)—is a list of simple, pure material objects that have a lot of connotations and referents. The agave and persimmon are sweet fruits with complex mythical associations, stick ball hearkens back to an ad hoc childhood game played in poorer neighborhoods, and purple okra has a long history in Black Southern cooking. Gay assembles the list keeping sonic texture in mind, choosing items that have different rhythmic stresses to create dynamic lines, but each item evokes a specific and rich backstory.

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The ultimate joy in the poem also is rooted in language. Gay ends on images of the speaker’s nice “running through a field / calling my name” (Lines 20-21) and the neighbor who “sings like an angel” (Lines 21-22). The synthesis of language with the human voice creates connection the speaker relishes.

Joy

Gay’s presentation of joy in “Sorrow Is Not My Name” is deeply entwined with notions of death. In her interview with Gay for On Being, NPR podcaster Krista Tippett points out:

To be with him is to train your gaze to see what’s terrible but also to see what’s wonderful and beautiful. To attend to and meditate on what you love, even within the work of justice. We practice tenderness and mercy in part because to understand that we are all suffering is one quality of what Ross Gay calls “adult joy” (Ross Gay—Tending Joy and Practicing Delight. The On Being Project, 4 Dec. 2020).

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“Sorrow Is Not My Name” encompasses this idea of “adult joy,” defining the experience of this feeling as distinct from more simple happiness in its connection with the sublime. Joy is inextricable from the knowledge that death and suffering undergirds all of human experience. In the same interview, Gay acknowledges this, saying:

Joy has everything to do with the fact that we’re all going to die. When I’m thinking about joy, I’m thinking about—that at the same time as something wonderful is happening, some connection is being made in my life, we are also in the process of dying. That is every moment. That is every moment (“Ross Gay—Tending Joy and Practicing Delight.” The On Being Project, 4 Dec. 2020).