From Ellen Bass

Wedding Song

Now let fear go out singing, the silver gate unlatched.

Now let the past tear loose from the branches, scarlet leaves flying.

Send the bridesmaids out at dawn

to sprinkle gold dust on the spider webs.

Let the oysters float on their briny thrones.

Drink them down with a toast to the goddess of luck.

May the wine plunge through your veins

and swim to all the heart's giddy chambers.

You are making a home for the pilgrim to rest,

architecture of skin and bone.

Raise the rafters. Drill the well. Each room

is a lung you fill with your breath.

Let love grow wild, insist on itself.

Let it be relentless, a weed with ghost white roots.

Joy be welcome. Enter at midnight.

Shine on these lovers braided and oiled.

Sorrow be welcome. Sit at the table.

Lay down your helmet. Lay down your head.

May the hinge of this day open like wings.

May night enfold you in its great black plumage.

--Ellen Bass

Friends and Writers,

I don't normally send out political mailings because we all have too much email flooding our mailboxes, but the right to marry affects me very personally so I am asking for your help.

In my own life I've experienced the devastating effects of homophobia. I didn't come out a a lesbian until I was 35 so I had years of life experience and could withstand any discrimination, judgments, or hatred directed at me. But my children were vulnerable and suffered in ways that were heartbreaking.

I know that extending the right to marry to gays and lesbians won't end all discrimination and pain for gays and lesbians and their families, but I am sure that it is a crucial step. I believe that if the right to marry is extended to gays and lesbians that we will save lives--gay youth will be able to visualize a healthy, loving future for themselves. We will support the children in gay and lesbian families. And we will afford respect to gay and lesbian couples.

My partner, Janet Bryer, and I have been together for 25 years, through raising children, through good times and bad, through sickness and health. It's still hard for me to comprehend how some people assume they have the right to regulate other people's hearts. But right now the polls say that voters are about equally split on this issue. And the anti-gay forces are pouring money into it. No On 8, the campaign to defeat the ban on marriage, is in serious need of funds. For many of us, the bulk of our efforts--both monetary and time--are going into the presidential election. This is certainly true for me. But if we all make even a small donation to the No on 8 campaign, it will add up to a significant contribution.

Whether you are gay or not, whether you live in California or not, whether you even believe in the institution of marriage or not, this is a critical time to defend equality for all people.

To contribute online, please go to Equality California.

Or send a check to:
NO on 8 – Equality California
Attn: Leanne Pittsford
2370 Market St, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94114

Thanks for your help. If each person who receives this email sends $25, that would be over $50,000! If you don't have $25, please send $10 or $5. And of course if you can send $50 or $100 or more, that would be terrific.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Thank you for making a contribution. Thank you for your integrity and your support.--Ellen

Should Writing Be Cathartic?

When I asked Alice Sebold about whether or not writing Lucky (her memoir about her brutal rape) was cathartic, she said no--that she had worked through those feelings before writing the book. She said, "I had already done my personal work. Memoirs should serve the people reading them, not the author writing."

Consider that comment in contrast to Robert Frost's famous insight about writing and feeling: "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."

I've been writing poetry and memoir for the past two years about my parents' illnesses and my father's death. Feeling is essential to me while I write. So is discovery. I can never claim I've worked out my feelings and thoughts in advance of writing--be that memoir, poetry or fiction. (That doesn't mean I write only to serve myself; I almost always imagine myself speaking to others as I write.)

Poet Ellen Bass addresses this as well in a recent online Poets & Writers intervew. I like how she says that her writing comes from something she's "trying to work out." To me, if I already have the thing settled, there's no reason to write about it.

Here's what Ellen says:

P&W: How did your mother’s death affect your writing?

Ellen Bass: Writing poetry for me was one of the primary ways that I grieved. I found that working with the poems was more natural to me than any other outward rituals or ceremonies around her death. I just thought during that whole period how fortunate I was to be a poet. I don’t know what people do who don’t have a way to sit with their experience in a tangible way. . . . Very often a poem comes from something that I’m trying to work out in my own life. Often I’ll write the same poem many times if there's an idea I’m grappling with. I’ll write it over and over in poems that don’t ultimately succeed until finally I have some entry into the poem.

Ellen Bass This Monday

Come meet the fabulous Ellen Bass this Monday, December 3, in San Jose at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library at 4 p.m.

At this free event, Ellen will read, take audience questions, and sign books.

Check out Ellen's website here. And listen to one of her poems here.

If You Knew

Just the other day, Garrison Keillor read Ellen Bass' stunning poem "If You Knew" on The Writer's Almanac. If you missed it, listen here.

Memories, Cesar and Poets n Writers

Laurie, an old family friend, sent us this. She's on the left. My sister Ann (who is the taller child, next to me, the shorter one) always thought Laurie was cool. And now here we have a photo to prove it. Also pictured are my parents.

Thanks to those of you who commented on my blog and emailed me personally about the situation with my mom. I know I'm not alone. Your reaching out means a lot.

In preparation for the experience of moving her tomorrow, I went on a 25-mile bike ride today. Cesar Millan's tactics with dogs work with people, too--well, they do with me. If I exercise hard, I'm much more centered and at peace the rest of the day. I also enjoy being "calm assertive" in my life.

(An aside to commenters: I know Millan is controversial, but I can't help loving the guy.)

* * *

If you want to read a profile of one of your favorite contemporary writers, it might be here.

Poets & Writers magazine and website is a great resource for lots of other things too, including current calls for submissions. I like subscribing to the magazine, but most of the what is in the magazine is available for free online.

I just noticed they have an interview with Ellen Bass, whom I featured on a past Poetry Monday.

Poets and Rushdie

See: Five Poets You Should Be Reading . . . I'm honored to be on this list!

(Another poet you should be reading: the guy who wrote the list, Collin Kelley.)

* * *

Last night at Bookshop Santa Cruz I saw Ellen Bass and Phyllis Koestenbaum read. As you know from a previous post, I'm a big fan of Ellen's, and last night she did not disappoint. Her new book is brilliant, funny, and deeply moving. And her delivery makes the poems pop in the air.

I'd never before heard Phyllis. She's fascinating. It seems like she's relentless in pushing herself to try new things. She read some fragments and some very long poems.

* * *

I'm reading The Satanic Verses. So far? Pretty damn funny, a romp. I keep thinking, someone wanted to kill him for this? Generally, I'm not big on satire (since I like my literature a bit more character-driven and sincere), but I am carried away by the sheer exuberance of Rushdie's writing.

Besides, Rushdie is visiting our campus in the fall, so I figured I better catch up . . . this novel has been gathering dust in my "published in 1988" pile.

Poetry Monday: Ellen Bass

If you've never read the whole of Mules of Love by Ellen Bass' , you're in for a treat. I wish I could read it again for the first time. I've taught it several times in my creative writing classes, and Ellen has generously come to speak to my students about her work.

I've taken writing workshops with Ellen, and she is a gifted teacher. She has a way with saying just the right thing (and of letting silence do its important work too . . . in teaching and in writing, she's a master of negative space). She also has a great sense of humor!

Now Ellen has a new book out, The Human Line--just released by Copper Canyon Press. Look what Billy Collins says about The Human Line: "Ellen Bass's frighteningly personal poems about sex, love, birth, motherhood, and aging are kept from mere confession by the graces of wit, an observant eye, an empathetic heart, and just the right image deployed at just the right time. The Human Line is full of real stunners."

Below is "Bone of My Bone and Flesh of My Flesh," a poem from The Human Line. (Click here to read more poems from the book.)

And exclusive to this blog, here is some commentary by Ellen about the poem: Ellen says, "I was working on a poem in which I needed a word for Janet, the woman with whom I have lived, loved, and raised children for twenty-five years. Searching through an old thesaurus--I still use the thesaurus my older brother handed down to me, published in 1962--I came across such a wonderful plethora of words that I thought they deserved a poem of their own."

Bone of My Bone and Flesh of My Flesh (by Ellen Bass)

I can't always refer to the woman I love,

my children’s other mother,

as my darling, my beloved,

sugar in my bowl. No.

I need a common, utilitarian word

that calls no more attention to itself

than nouns like grass, bread, house.

The terms husband and wife are perfect for that.

Hassling with PG&E

or dropping off dry cleaning,

you don't want to say,

The light of my life doesn't like starch.

Don't suggest spouse—a hideous word.

And partner is sterile as a boardroom.

Couldn't we afford a term

for the woman who carried that girl in her arms

when she was still all promise,

that boy curled inside her womb?

And today, when I go to kiss her

and she says, "Not now, I'm reading,"

still she deserves a syllable or two—if only

so I can express how furious

she makes me. But

maybe it's better this way —

no puny pencil stub of a word.

Maybe these are exactly the times

to drag out the whole galaxy

of endearments: Buttercup,

I should say, lambkin, mon petit chou.

Set down War and Peace,

just for a moment, and lift

your ruby lips to mine.

And talking to the dishwasher repairman,

the vacuum cleaner salesclerk, the woman

in the Blue Cross billing department

I could explain that I'd already sent the co-pay

for my soulmate, my duckling,

my chocolate-covered cream puff.

Maybe it would brighten her day, too.

Hello, I might say, you precious,

you jewel, O queen among queens,

darling, honey pie, angel,

my sweet patootie.

* * * * * * *

Ellen Bass's poetry books include The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)and Mules of Love (BOA, 2002). She is also co-author of The Courage to Heal (HarperCollins). She teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University, in Santa Cruz, and at beautiful locations around the world, including Big Sur, British, Columbia, and Mallorca.

Yes, I Will Take You

"Hey Mom, do you want to eat in the dining room?"
"No, there are a bunch of old people in there."

Words from my 74-year-old mom, who is now in a rehab facility for about a week or so for rest and physical therapy. She'll be released when she is less of a fall risk.

Who can blame her for not wanting to identify as an "old person." Up until my father died in March, she was going to the gym, writing articles and books, attending a weekly writing group, making dinner every night, tending to my father's varied and many needs, and being active in a variety of ways in the community.

After he died she had two successive falls, and suddenly she has lost her husband, her home, her health, her independence.

I'm whirling from it all. I know my sisters are. My mom? I can barely imagine.

Grief? Loss? What are the right words?

My friend Gabriele Rico sent me the perfect Ellen Bass poem, with the perfect words. I'd read it several times before in Mules of Love, and re-reading it re-reminds me that what my mom and my family are enduring right now is ... well ... the human condition.

Here's the poem:

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.