Like a Beggar by Ellen Bass

Like a Beggar Reviews

• 
  Ken

  Nice to meet you, Ellen. Good stuff here. I like your free verse world because it's the same air I breathe, generally.
  
  As for the book, the vast majority of poems are one-stanza jobs, often tall as centers on basketball teams. Bass's is a very journal-esque kind of world, so we see mostly treatments of her life, her kids, dealing with death of parents, and sex. You know. All that ordinary stuff.
  
  Bass also includes Pablo Neruda-like odes throughout. Here we have odes to repetition, the heart, invisibility, boredom, fish, the God of Atheists, Dr. Ladd's black shirt skirt, and the first peach. You'll find these odes in the dictionary under the word "eclectic," in other words.
  
  For an example of Bass's style, I give you one of the most poetic flourishes on killing an animal you'll ever read (and oh, reader discretion advised...vegans, stay away):
  
  What Did I Love
  
  What did I love about killing the chickens? Let me start
  with the drive to the farm as darkness
  was sinking back into the earth.
  The road damp and shining like the snail’s silver
  ribbon and the orchard
  with its bony branches. I loved the yellow rubber
  aprons and the way Janet knotted my broken strap.
  And the stainless-steel altars
  we bleached, Brian sharpening
  the knives, testing the edge on his thumbnail. All eighty-eight Cornish
  hens huddled in their crates. Wrapping my palms around
  their white wings, lowering them into the tapered urn.
  Some seemed unwitting as the world narrowed;
  some cackled and fluttered; some struggled.
  I gathered each one, tucked her bright feet,
  drew her head through the kill cone’s sharp collar,
  her keratin beak and the rumpled red vascular comb
  that once kept her cool as she pecked in her mansion of grass.
  I didn’t look into those stone eyes. I didn’t ask forgiveness.
  I slid the blade between the feathers
  and made quick crescent cuts, severing
  the arteries just under the jaw. Blood like liquor
  pouring out of the bottle. When I see the nub of heart later,
  it’s hard to believe such a small star could flare
  like that. I lifted each body, bathing it in heated water
  until the scaly membrane of the shanks
  sloughed off under my thumb.
  And after they were tossed in the large plucking drum
  I loved the newly naked birds. Sundering
  the heads and feet neatly at the joints, a poor
  man’s riches for golden stock. Slitting a fissure
  reaching into the chamber,
  freeing the organs, the spill of intestines, blue-tinged gizzard,
  the small purses of lungs, the royal hearts,
  easing the floppy liver, carefully, from the green gall bladder,
  its bitter bile. And the fascia unfurling
  like a transparent fan. When I tug the esophagus
  down through the neck, I love the suck and release
  as it lets go. Then slicing off the anus with its gray pearl
  of shit. Over and over, my hands explore
  each cave, learning to see with my fingertips. Like a traveller
  in a foreign country, entering church after church.
  In every one the same figures of the Madonna, Christ on the Cross,
  which I’d always thought was gore
  until Marie said to her it was tender,
  the most tender image, every saint and political prisoner,
  every jailed poet and burning monk.
  But though I have all the time in the world
  to think thoughts like this, I don’t.
  I’m empty as I rinse each carcass,
  and this is what I love most.
  It’s like when the refrigerator turns off and you hear
  the silence. As the sun rose higher
  we shed our sweatshirts and moved the coolers into the shade,
  but, other than that, no time passed.
  I didn’t get hungry. I didn’t want to stop.
  I was breathing from some bright reserve.
  We twisted each pullet into plastic, iced and loaded them in the cars.
  I loved the truth. Even in just this one thing:
  looking straight at the terrible,
  one-sided accord we make with the living of this world.
  At the end, we scoured the tables, hosed the dried blood,
  the stain blossoming through the water.
  
  
• 
  Bud Smith

  The first poem in this, Relax, is the best poem in this book and it's so good, it crawled out of the book and put a bunch of poetry collections I own in headlocks, which is a pretty unexpected thing to have happen from a poem that's got zen mice and strawberries in it. The rest of the collection was astounding too though, I put a Star next to 12 of the poems. I guess that means that Ioved 12 of the poems so much that I just had to mark the table of contents up as like an offering to the poetry gods or something. Ellen Bass has an astonishing way that she writes which is kind of this big jog around a central theme and the jog just keeps bringing the poem somewhere unexpected, through dreamlike forests and busy downtowns and into and out of family run liquor stores and more than once, contemplating the nature and brick and mortar of the entire universe itself through something as common as cutting a chickens head off or smashing a plate of spaghetti against a restaurant wall in Northern California or just wanting wild sex from your partner of 30 years. Bass also does that thing on her jog that was perfected by Larry David when he was writing Seinfeld episodes or later, Curb Your Enthusiasm: she presents a theme at the beginning of her poem, this little sliver of unexpected green gem built of modern life, and as the poem jogs on, the gem gets lost a little on purpose as other cards are turned, but then at the end, she turns a last card and there is the gem from the beginning and it is astounding and fulfilling and wow, you've laughed and felt there is unlimited wonder and opportunity in the form of contemporary poetry look at that all the other poetry books on the shelf are fleeing in fear because they don't want to be headlocked into submission. Surrender to this one.
• 
  Chris

  I love these poems. The world, life, and a bit of introspection. Tasty morsels on a day I am feeling hungry.
• 
  Peycho Kanev

  When You Return
  
  Fallen leaves will climb back into trees.
  Shards of the shattered vase will rise
  and reassemble on the table.
  Plastic raincoats will refold
  into their flat envelopes. The egg,
  bald yolk and its transparent halo,
  slide back into the thin, calcium shell.
  Curses will pour back into mouths,
  letters unwrite themselves, words
  siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair
  will darken and become the feathers
  of a black swan. Bullets will snap
  back into their chambers, the powder
  tamped tight in brass casings. Borders
  will disappear from maps. Rust
  revert to oxygen and time. The fire
  return to the log, the log to the tree,
  the white root curled up
  in the unsplit seed. Birdsong will fly
  into the lark’s lungs, answers
  become questions again.
  When you return, sweaters will unravel
  and wool grow on the sheep.
  Rock will go home to mountain, gold
  to vein. Wine crushed into the grape,
  oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in
  to the spider’s belly. Night moths
  tucked close into cocoons, ink drained
  from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds
  will be returned to coal, coal
  to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light
  to stars sucked back and back
  into one timeless point, the way it was
  before the world was born,
  that fresh, that whole, nothing
  broken, nothing torn apart.
• 
  Lillian

  3.5-4
  This poetry collection is H O R N Y. That’s right. Capital H O R N Y horny.
  
  There were some lines I loved, like in the poem “Saturn’s Rings”: “Maybe there’s a word in another language / for when distance dissolves into time.”
  
  Of course, “French Chocolates” is a highlight, and I found a similar voice in the final poem, “Let’s,” which was another favorite.
  
  I want to keep this and read it again in 10, then 20 years.
• 
  Caitlin

  everything here
  seems to need us
  Rainer Maria Rilke
  
  I can hardly imagine it
  as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
  prayer of my arms swinging
  in counterpoint to my feet.
  Here I am, suspended
  between the sidewalk and the twilight,
  the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
  What if you felt the invisible
  tug between you and everything?
  A boy on a bicycle rides by,
  his white shirt open, flaring
  behind him like wings.
  It's a hard time to be human. We know too much
  and too little. Does the breeze need us?
  The cliffs? The gulls?
  If you've managed to do one good thing,
  the ocean doesn't care.
  But when Newton's apple fell toward the earth,
  the earth, ever so slightly, fell
  toward the apple."
  
  -- "The World Has Need of You"
• 
  Eileen

  I thoroughly enjoyed Ellen Bass' latest poetry collection. I had the pleasure of attending a reading at the Walt Whitman center in Huntington, NY, while visiting Long Island in April. She was awesome, beginning with the first poem in the volume, RELAX. As always, her poems are wry, moving and extremely accessible.
• 
  Edgar Trevizo

  Absolutely espectacular. It is a glorious poem collection by a fine and beautiful poet with a keen sense of the connections between everything. I loved it deeply.
• 
  M D

  Rain, if it comes, will come.
  This god loves the virus as much as the child.
  
  i wish half-star ratings existed because this is definitely a 3.5. loved some of the poems, but some were so dull that it almost evened out.
• 
  Desirae

  “It's a hard time to be human. We know too much
  and too little.”
• 
  Rachael Quinn

  One of the best collections I've read this year.
• 
  David

  Another wonderful collection.
  
  Favorites include:
  Flies
  Moonlight
  Ode to the Fish
  The World Has Need of You
  Walking by Circle Market Late at Night
  When You Return
• 
  Nina

  
  
  
  
  “Poetry is such a good medium for coming to terms with expectations and disappointments. That is how we connect with other people. We need that. All of our suffering is not so different from each other’s. The first poem in Like a Beggar, begins: “Relax. Bad things are going to happen.” And it ends with eating a strawberry.”
  Ellen Bass, interview with Kendall Poe from Tin House
  
  Ellen Bass’ third collection of poetry is ripe with beginnings and endings, in a large, metaphorical sense as well as specific instances. She takes everyday thoughts and experiences and through her use of imagery and metaphor, makes them universal. Aging, sex, and our connection to nature are repeated themes. “Ordinary Sex” begins
  If no swan descends
  in a blinding glare of plumage,
  drumming the air with deafening wings,
  if the earth doesn’t tremble
  and rivers don’t tumble uphill,
  
  and then concludes with these tender lines:
  And then a few kisses, easy, loose,
  like the ones we’ve been
  kissing for a hundred years.
  
  Many of the poems in this collection are long, 1 ½ to 2 pages, without stanza breaks. This format increases the sense of contemplation about life, which is a main theme throughout the book. In a refreshing change from the majority of contemporary poetry collections, there are no sections. Scattered throughout are odes to things most of us would never have thought of as ode material. These are some of my favorite poems. Notice the interesting juxtaposition between the title and the content.
  I like to take the same walk
  down the wide expanse of Woodrow to the ocean,
  and most days I turn left toward the lighthouse.
  The sea is always different. Some days dreamy,
  waves hardly waves, just a broad undulation
  in no hurry to arrive. Other days the surf’s drunk,
  crashing into the cliffs like a car wreck.
  (Ode to Repetition)
  
  “Ode to Boredom” describes a family vacation in “The rose-washed light of southern Italy.”
  Nothing to do. Not a church or museum. Not even
  A newspaper in English. We’d read all our books
  and I’d embroidered the linen dishtowels.
  We walked the empty vineyards and cherry orchards.
  The fact that this is an ode celebrates the so-called boredom we yearn for when on vacation.
  
  Bass has a playful, whimsical voice. A prime example of this is the poem “When You Return.”
  Fallen leaves will climb back into trees.
  Shards of the shattered vase will rise
  and reassemble on the table.
  Plastic raincoats will refold
  into their flat envelopes.
  
  And the oh-my-God-I –wish-I- had-written-that- line, which opens the poem “Prayer.”
  Once I wore a dress liquid as vodka.
  
• 
  Alarie

  I was fortunate to hear Ellen Bass read last week, then went home to start this collection. She often writes of the inevitability of bad things happening, but she also believes in the rejuvenating joy that can catch us unaware:
  
  “…For a moment
  it seems possible that every frailty, every pain,
  could be an opening, a crack that lets the unexpected
  reach us.”
  
  Bass finds inspiration everywhere. Here are just some of the grand topics and small studies she captures in this book: telescopes, microscopes, murder, sex, ordinary days, killing chickens, the comfort of repetition, a sick child, a dying mother, wasps, the trials of aging, infidelity, a luxury hotel, and a cheetah.
  
  Perhaps my favorite poem is “Restaurant,” in which she marvels at our human ability to go on doing what we need to do in the face of tragedy. It begins,
  
  “Before she told me, she let me
  finish my dinner.”
  
  We understand the news, untold to us, is terrible, for she marvels that she’s still upright at the table, signing her credit card receipt:
  
  “…very few people are dropping to all fours
  and baying at the empty white plates.”
  
  In “The World Has Need of You,” she wonders:
  
  “What if you felt the invisible
  tug between you and everything?”
  
  Perhaps that connectivity is where we find the strength to go on.
  
• 
  TinHouseBooks

  Emma Komlos-Hrobsky (Assistant Editor, Tin House Magazine): Ellen Bass charmed the socks off me when she read “At The Padre Hotel In Bakersfield, California” at the Writers @ Work conference in Alta, Utah. I loved its slyness and honesty, its willingness to walk right up to the real stuff of this world. I immediately bought Bass’s collection Like a Beggar and read it in happy fits and starts on the plane ride home, then the subway going to and from work, meting it out carefully poem by poem so as not to slurp it down too greedily. Bass’s poems in this book all have that same charm of “At the Padre.” They take pleasure in engaging with the thingness of living—zippers, planets, peaches, telephones for transacting affairs, feet—without any preciousness, with smarts and grace. Totally recommended to cure you of things you didn’t even know were ailing you.
• 
  Michaelann

  Wow wow wow wow.
  Ellen Bass.
  That's all I have to say.
  Most gorgeous of all poets.
  
  I love too many of the poems in this collection, but i would recommend it just for the emotional impact alone of finding the line that is the reference for the title "Like a Beggar."
  
  A complete celebration of corporality and human love and what it feels like to be alive for just this short time.
• 
  Sarah

  Good poet.
• 
  Jan

  Ellen Bass writes so honestly about aging, sex, desire, motherhood, caring for her aging mother. Her images are so fresh - "a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic/ladle scooping the icy depths" ("Ode to the Fish"). Her line breaks turn meaning delightfully on its head - "If you've managed to do one good thing,/the ocean doesn't care" ("The World Has Need of You").
  Sometimes I had questions about what happened in the stories of the poems (what did she tell her in "Restaurant"? What's going on in "Ode to Dr. Ladd's Black Slit Skirt"?). But I usually knew exactly where I was and who was speaking. I loved the sexiness of "Let's," the rewind images in "When You Return" and the contradiction of the "Ode to the God of Atheists."
  The odes reminded me of Neruda's, with his attention to detail and his praise of everyday objects and foods. Ellen Bass' writing is the everyday plus surprises, which is the best kind of poetry.
• 
  Laura

  Ellen Bass is my favorite poet. At last, I've read through this entire book, in order. I prefer her comical poems, but Bass does not write any poems I do not adore. The poems in Like a Beggar are lively and full of images – and entirely unpretentious. The first of her poems I ever read, "Waiting for Rain" (conveniently featured in this book!) has been massively influential on the way I use language in my own poetry.
  
  Finally, the character of this Bass's (seemingly autobiographical) speaker(s) definitely weighs in her favor: any writer who uses the word "heterosexuals" as a noun will win the greater part of my heart's acreage.
• 
  Max Potthoff

  "So here's the view, the breeze, the pulse / in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you'll get fat, / slip on the bathroom tiles in a foreign hotel / and crack your hip. You'll be lonely. / Oh, taste how sweet and tart / the red juice is, how the tiny seeds / crunch between your teeth."
  
  I fell in love with Ellen Bass after hearing Nicole Sealy read "Indigo" on a podcast. Such a treat to be at the front end of reading her work.
• 
  Tracy

  A beautiful expanse of grief, joy, odes to the ordinary becoming extraordinary.
  
  "And I was at the enter of our tiny
  solar system flung out on the edge
  of a minor arm, a spur of one spiraling galaxy,
  drenched in the light."
  -from Pleasantville, New Jersey 1955
  
  The final poem, "Let's," explodes with life.
• 
  Anatoly Molotkov

  "One morning/ one of us will rise bewildered/ without the other and open the curtains./ There will be the same shaggy redwood/ in the neighbor's yard and the faultless stars/ going out one by one into the day." Moving and personal.
• 
  Mary

  Heart-stopping, masterful, observations and connections in this collection. "For a moment / it seems possible that every frailty, every pain, / could be an opening, a crack that lets the unexpected / reach us."
• 
  R.W. Moore

  I don't have a lot in common with Ellen Bass and yet, judging by how much her poetry spoke to me, we might have a lot in common after all. She's a gifted writer to be sure, but beyond that, she's a beautiful soul who has endured a lot and yet still finds beauty (though at times forced) in the world around her. The hard task for her, and for myself, is in accepting what is as the true gift of being alive. This little book is a journey that I felt privileged to take, and one that was stay with me for a long time.
• 
  Soltana

  So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
  in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
  slip on the bathroom tiles in a foreign hotel
  and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
  Oh, taste how sweet and tart
  the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
  crunch between your teeth.
• 
  Cathlina Bergman

  Heard her read tonight! It was fascinating to hear about her writing process!
• 
  Sebastian

  First read: June 21, 2017, Wednesday
• 
  Kelan Koning

  A collection that begs to be revisited. Some achingly true pieces here.