A flyer announcing the 28th annual reading In Celebration of the Muse in Santa Cruz, CA, prompted me to read Ellen Bass' latest poetry collection. One of 20 women writers featured at the Muse reading this year, Bass will be joined by some of Santa Cruz’ finest, including Angie Boissevain, Joan Zimmerman, Lisa Allen Ortiz, and Julia Alter-Canvin, among others. It promises to be a great evening celebrating great writing.
As Bass’ title suggests, the poems in this collection revolve around human concerns: the birth of a child, the death of a parent, relief over the homecoming of a lost dog, compassion for a woman who has run over the poet's cat, dancing with her love to Louis Jordan. Running through these poems is a deep awareness — and celebration — of the ordinary joys and suffering that make life so extraordinary.
A personal favorite is "Asking Directions in Paris," which captures perfectly the experience of trying — and mostly failing — to communicate in another's language.
Ou est le boulevard Saint Michel?
You pronounce the question carefully...
you feel a flicker of accomplishment.
But the triumph is short-lived when the helpful native speaker does not provide a textbook answer, instead replying with:
...something wholly unintelligible,
some version of: On the corner,
he is a shop of jewels in a fountain
when the hotel arrives on short feet.
I laughed out loud at this. Bass nailed the way language is acquired (or not) in a jumble of words heard and misheard. And then she turned it, from being a simple observation of personal failing, to something far bigger:
you think this must be how it is
with destiny: God explaining
and explaining what you must do,
and all you can make out is a few
unconnected phrases, a word or two, a wave
in what you pray is the right direction.
This is Bass' gift: at their best, her poems invite us in through the door of specific experience, and then show us how — as she writes in the title poem — we are all lashed to the human line.
