"Gay . . . can score a direct hit when he wants to. In 'Bringing the Shovel Down, ' he employs a variety of voices. The most effective of these . . . is the voice in which Gay shears off the 'poetic' trappings and just lets his launguage 'stutter and thrum," and he puts it in a poem called 'Say It.' Yes, you think: say it. He's at his best when he comes right out with it."
--New York Times

"Ross Gay is some kind of brilliant latter-day troubadour whose poetry is shaped not only by yearning but also play and scrutiny, melancholy and intensity. I might be shocked by the bold, persistent love throughout Bringing the Shovel Down if I wasn't so wooed and transformed by it."
--Terrance Hayes

"With masterful rhythms and multiple tones, Ross Gay gets down to bare-bones difficulty: love often tinged with grief, violence, and deception. He moves from macrocosm to microcosm, probing injustice's absurdities as well as a pining self that can't be pinned down. As with his 'little dreamer, little hard hat, little heartbeat, ' Gay's poems are vitalized by the poet's ache for compassion and truth."
--Ira Sadoff

"Artfully honest. Gay's poems are 'small lanterns' of 'lighting' and more."
--Philadelphia Inquirer

"Blending classic craft with contemporary subject matter, poet Ross Gay's new collection packs a wallop in its urgency to communication the joys and sorows of life."
--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Gay's language and imagery are exquisite."

--Synecdoche

"With language wholly his own, sparkling clean and tender, 'Bringing the Shovel Down' exposes a dark marriage of love and violence from which one cannot turn away."
--ForeWord Magazine

"These poems speak out of a global consciousness as well as an individual wisdom that is bright with pity, terror, and rage, and which asks the reader to realize that she is not alone--that the grief he carries is not just his own. Gay is a poet of conscience, who echoes Tomas Tranströmer's 'We do not surrender. But want peace.'"
--Jean Valentine