RSS
Home
How poetry can save your life: an Interview with lesbian poet, author Ellen Bass (Part One)
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg)
Poet and author, Ellen Bass. (Photo Courtesy of Ellen Bass)
“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” --- Dead Poet's Society
Poetry. Is there any other form of writing that stirs the soul, binds the wounds, heals the heart and intimidates people more than poetry?
There is something organic in poetry, something vital and necessary to one’s experience of language and life. Poetry does away with the peripheral excess of words. It concentrates only on what is essential, true and yes, lifesaving.
It is my pleasure to share with you a recent interview I had with a wonderful woman poet and author, Ellen Bass. Bass is a best-selling co-author of The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and has published two collections of poetry: The Human Line (2007) and Mules of Love (2002), the latter of which won the Lamba Literary Award and teaches poetry and creative writing at Pacific University and various writing workshops in Santa Cruz and "other beautiful locations nationally and internationally--since 1974."
I hope you enjoy her interview and the lovely poems she shares within as much as I have.
Tell me about yourself...
I live in Santa Cruz. I moved here in 1974 and couldn't leave. I have a little studio in my garage that looks out on a lot of green--a big maple, an old live oak, overgrown camellia, a big stand of black bamboo, overgrown weeds. Today all of it's blowing in the breeze.
Some of my poems, perhaps, come closest to expressing my philosophy of life. I'll include a couple short ones here. This from my book Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002):
The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, how can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
And this from The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)
If You Knew
What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.
A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
You're an award-winning poet and author. How and when did you first know you wanted to be a writer? How would you describe your writing style?
I wanted to be a writer since I was in high school, but I never thought it was possible. When I found out my first poetry book was going to be published I sat down on the side of my bed and thought to myself, Everything I've been told isn't true. What I meant was that all I'd absorbed about what one could and couldn't do in this life no longer held true. Everything was possible.
My writing style is direct. I work to speak in a voice that is meaningful communication. Poetry is the most intimate of all writing. I want to speak first from me to myself and then from me to you.
What inspires you?
So much inspires me. People living their lives with courage, beauty of all kinds, nature in all its aspects, people I love and people I hardly know, and of course other poets. Whenever I feel uninspired I read the poets I admire. Personally the individual who inspires me most is my very oldest friend, Dan Gottlieb, whom I've known since I was about three. We grew up together in Pleasantville, NJ and he is now a psychologist in Philadelphia--and a fine author. He was in a car accident when he was a young man and has been quadriplegic for many years. When he talks, I listen.
How has being lesbian impacted your writing?
My partner, Janet Bryer, and I have been together for 26 years. Before that, I was married to a man, but even then I was profoundly affected by lesbian writers. In the late 60's and early 70's women, and particularly lesbians, were writing about things that never before had come into literature. The great poet, Muriel Rukeyser said, "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." I was intensely interested in hearing what these writers had to tell us about women's lives that had never been said. That was the beginning of my coming out. Unlike most lesbians (or at least I think this is unlike most lesbians), my realization that I wanted to be with women arose from literature. So it's possibly truer to say that writing affected my being a lesbian more than being a lesbian affected my writing.
You teach poetry and creative writing in Santa Cruz, CA, among other places...
I love teaching. They say you teach what you need to learn and so I'm delighted that I get to spend my days talking about poetry and literature. I've been teaching for over forty years! The beauty of teaching is that there's always more to learn--not only about poetry, but about how to teach. Each student is unique and so I am challenged anew with every student to find the best way to teach that particular person.
I teach in many inspiring environments and when my students write, I write too. I've written many poems at Esalen in Big Sur where I teach with Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar, as well as on my own, in Mallorca where I teach regularly, in Taos where I teach with Marie Howe, and other gorgeous places.
For more info: Ellen Bass.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
