Like a Beggar

Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist, 2015Featured on NPRs The Writers AlmanacEllen Basss new poetry collection, Like a Beggar, pulses with sex, humor and compassion.The New York TimesBass tries to convey everyday wonder on contemporary experiences of sex, work, aging, and war. Those who turn to poetry to become confidants for anothers stories and secrets will not be disappointed.Publishers WeeklyIn her fifth book of poetry, Bass addresses everything from Saturns rings and Newtons 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 collections endfollowing her musings on suicide and generosity, desire and repetitionit becomes lucidly clear that Bass is not only a poet but also a philosopher and a storyteller.BooklistEllen 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, were drinking scotch at the kitchen table.Janet and I just watched a NOVA specialand were explaining to her motherthe age and size of the universethe 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 Makers Markwhile were drinking Glendronach...Ellen Basss 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 coedited (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 coauthor of several nonfiction 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.