Like a Beggar - Softcover

Bass, Ellen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 155659464X ISBN 13: 9781556594649

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press, 2014

Synopsis

Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist, 2015

Featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac

Ellen Bass’s new poetry collection, Like a Beggar, pulses with sex, humor and compassion.” The New York Times

Bass tries to convey everyday wonder on contemporary experiences of sex, work, aging, and war. Those who turn to poetry to become confidants for another's stories and secrets will not be disappointed.” Publishers Weekly

In her fifth book of poetry, Bass addresses everything from Saturn’s rings and Newton’s law of gravitation to wasps and Pablo Neruda. Her words are nostalgic, vivid, and visceral. Bass arrives at the truth of human carnality rooted in the extraordinary need and promise of the individual. Bass shows us that we are as radiant as we are ephemeral, that in transience glistens resilient history and the remarkable fluidity of connection. By the collection’s end following her musings on suicide and generosity, desire and repetition it becomes lucidly clear that Bass is not only a poet but also a philosopher and a storyteller.” Booklist

Ellen Bass brings a deft touch as she continues her ongoing interrogations of crucial moral issues of our times, while simultaneously delighting in endearing human absurdities. From the start of Like a Beggar, Bass asks her readers to relax, even though "bad things are going to happen," because the "bad" gets mined for all manner of goodness.

From "Another Story":

After dinner, we're drinking scotch at the kitchen table.
Janet and I just watched a NOVA special
and we're explaining to her mother
the age and size of the universe
the hundred billion stars in the hundred billion galaxies.
Dotty lives at Dominican Oaks, making her way down the long hall.
How about the sun? she asks, a little farmshit in the endlessness.
I gather up a cantaloupe, a lime, a cherry,
and start revolving this salad around the chicken carcass.
This is the best scotch I ever tasted, Dotty says,
even though we gave her the Maker's Mark
while we're drinking Glendronach...

Ellen Bass's poetry includes  Like A Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), The Human Line  (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), which was named a Notable Book by the San Francisco Chronicle, and Mules of Love (BOA, 2002), which won the Lambda Literary Award.  She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973). Her work has frequently been published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Sun  and many other journals. She is co-author of several non-fiction books, including The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins, 1988, 2008) which has sold over a million copies and been translated into twelve languages. She is part of the core faculty of the MFA writing program at Pacific University.

About this title

About the Author

Ellen Bass was born in Philadelphia in 1947. She is the author of four books of poetry including The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), which was named a Notable Book of 2007 by the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition, she is co-author of the million-seller Courage to Heal. After a ten-year break from writing to work with survivors of child sexual abuse, Bass felt a calling to return to poetry with the acclaimed Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002.) In 1970, she received her master’s degree from Boston University, where she studied with Anne Sexton. Her groundbreaking work, No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday) was one of the first anthologies dedicated to poetry written specifically by women. She currently teaches in the low residency MFA program at Pacific University, and lives in Santa Cruz, CA, where she has taught writing and poetry workshops since 1974.

From Booklist

In her fifth book of poetry, Bass addresses everything from Saturn’s rings and Newton’s law of gravitation to wasps and Pablo Neruda. Her words are nostalgic, vivid, and visceral. In contemplation of slaughtered chickens, a fly, jellyfish, and the “thousand-pound heart” of the blue whale, Bass arrives at the truth of human carnality rooted in the extraordinary need and promise of the individual. Through Bass’ eyes, a pearly orchid is not unlike the milky thighs of a woman—“blood blooming through her veins”—and the thorax of the wasp “expanding and contracting” has the power to make us aware of our “own shallow breath.” In the exoskeleton of a wasp and in the earth that once fell “ever so slightly . . . toward the apple,” Bass shows us that we are as radiant as we are ephemeral, that in transience glistens resilient history and the remarkable fluidity of connection. By the collection’s end—following her musings on suicide and generosity, desire and repetition—it becomes lucidly clear that Bass is not only a poet but also a philosopher and a storyteller. --Briana Shemroske

Edition details

• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 155659464X
• ISBN 13: 9781556594649
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 70