This is MPR's Life Kit. I'm Christina Kala. Let's talk about Delight, specifically Delight in the

everyday. Please introduce yourself, tell me your name and what it is that you do or just how you

would introduce yourself. Yeah, my name is Roske and you know, I write. Yeah, that's accurate.

I'm a garden. That's Roske. He's a writer, poet, gardener, and the author of the Book of Delights.

In that collection of essays, he explores the delights of handmade infinity scarves,

loitering, the joy of carrying a heavy bag between two people. Pop-hots, even weeds.

It's a book I've read many times and I often gift copies of it to my friends because it can be so

easy to miss the beauty around you. Rostee teaches at Indiana University and says he'll sometimes

start class like this. Tell me something that was beautiful that you started on the way to class.

And it can be really challenging for people to say that because it feels vulnerable to be like,

I thought something was beautiful. You want to sort of admit it that you thought something was

beautiful. You've also admitted that you're movable, which I think also is an admission that you have

needs. This episode of Life Kit, a conversation with poet Roske, on the role of Joy in Day

Lid Life. The difficulty of allowing yourself to be moved and why he thinks it's important to use

the word love.

So, Ros, what does Joy look like to you? I'm writing about joy, you know, and the thing is I'm

not exactly sure what joy is and I'm sort of constantly trying to sort of wonder about it,

wonder about it with other people. But for instance, you know, I've worked for years on this

project called the Bloomington Community Orchard. And within about eight months, we eventually planted

this orchard and it's been just cared for by so many people and it's been loved and adored and

wondered about by so many people. The sort of feeling of watching those trees go into the ground and

all of that labor and all of that care and all of that struggle actually too. Like we were trying to

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