About this episode
Ross Gay’s poem “ Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt ” uses an everyday task to examine what is made and unmade in small moments. He imagines his fingers opening and closing things, like buttons, the eyes of a dead person, relationships. In doing so, the poem asks us to simply pay attention, today, to what we’re doing with our hands — to understand them as intimate pathways into the stories of our bodies and the stories of our lives. A question to reflect on after you listen: What have you done with your hands today? What are you opening? What are you closing? About the Poet: Ross Gay is a writer and a professor of English at Indiana University Bloomington. His books include the poetry collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude , winner of the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a book of essays, The Book of Delights . He is a board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard and a co-founder of The Tenderness Project. “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt” comes from Ross Gay’s book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude . Thank you to the University of Pittsburgh Press, who published the book, and gave us permission to use Ross’s poem. Read it on our website at onbeing.org . Find the transcript for this episode at onbeing.org . The original music in this episode was composed by Gautam Srikishan . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.