Mules of Love by Ellen Bass

Mules of Love Reviews

• 
  tee

  the epic highs (everything on the menu, remodeling the bathroom, backdoor karaoke, for my daughter on her twenty-first birthday, bearing witness, the thing is, sleeping next to the man on the plane, and what if i spoke of despair, insomnia) and lows (tulip blossoms, can’t get over her, tigers and people, marriage without sex) of ellen bass—sometimes baffling but otherwise intoxicating.
  “how does the love keep swelling in the cavities of our frail bodies, how do these husks hold so much jagged pleasure in their parched split skins?” i could live forever now.
• 
  Sarah

  from "I Love the Way Men Crack"
  
  I love the way men crack
  open when their wives leave them,
  their sheaths curling back like the split
  shells of roasted chestnuts, exposing
  the sweet creamy meat. They call you
  and unburden their hearts the way a woman
  takes off her jewels, the heavy
  pendant earrings, the stiff lace gown and corset,
  and slips into a loose kimono. [...]
  
  they grow younger and younger. They cry
  with the unselfconciousness of children.
  When they hug you, they cling.
  Like someone who's needed glasses for a long time—
  and finally got them-they look around
  just for the pleasure of it: the detail,
  the sharp edges of what the world has to offer.
  
  These raw poems caught me off guard. I heard this one above first at a gathering with friends, and as it progressed I felt my breath catch as I began to recognize what she described so fully as if it were happening. Then I had to find this book and see what else she had written.
  
  from "And what if I spoke of despair"
  
  ...Maybe I can’t
  offer you any more than you can offer me—
  but what if I stopped on the trail, with shreds
  of manzanita bark lying in russet scrolls
  and yellow bay leaves, little lanterns
  in the dim afternoon, and cradled despair
  in my arms, the way I held my own babies
  after they’d fallen asleep, when there was no
  reason to hold them, only
  I didn’t want to put them down.
  
  What I found in reading these poems one afternoon is that they always speak from the gut, whether regarding lust or parental love or romance or solitude. There's nothing superficial or inauthentic here, or merely witty; it is all fully real, like she cleaves these experiences from the flesh of those she encounters.
• 
  AJ Nolan

  Read this because it has my one of my favorite poems, The Thing Is, and I have always meant to read it in context, and I am so glad I did. This collection is diverse and beautiful. Sexual poems, poems about long time partnerships, what if wonderings, ordinary days, grief, worry - all the makings of life.
  
  And this beautiful long poem, that I won't quote all of here, called "Bearing Witness," which is all about child abuse and neglect, and how much we'd all rather ignore it, and go to the movies for false adrenaline rushes, then acknowledge it in our neighborhoods. And I think the last two stanzas really pay homage to those who do listen, like the therapists, the caregivers, the best friends. And the last seven lines are just a punch in the gut of painting what too many children suffer. Anyway, here it is:
  
  And if we stop, all our fears
  will come to pass. The knowledge of evil
  will coat us like grease
  from a long shift at the griddle. Our sweat
  will smell like the sweat of the victims.
  
  And this is why you do it--listen
  at the outskirts of what our species
  has accomplished, listen until the world is flat
  again, and you are standing on its edge.
  This is why you hold them in our arms, allowing
  their snot to smear your skin, their sour
  breath to mist your face. You listen
  to slash the membrane that divides us, to plant
  the shiny seed of yourself
  in the common earth. You crank
  open the rusty hinge of your heart
  like an old beach umbrella. Because God
  is not a flash of diamond light. God is
  the kicked child, the child
  who rocks alone in the basement,
  the one fucked so many times
  she does not know her name, her mind
  burning like a star.
  
  And then immediately following that was my favorite 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.
• 
  Nate H.

  Great collection 😏
• 
  ra

  — “So here’s a prayer
  for the wakeful, the souls who can’t rest:
  As you lie with eyes
  open or closed, may something
  comfort you—a mockingbird, a breeze, the smell
  of crushed mint, Chopin’s Nocturnes,
  your child’s birth, a kiss,
  or even me—in my chilly kitchen
  with my coat over my nightgown—thinking of you.”
  
• 
  che

  “So here’s a prayer
  for the wakeful, the souls who can’t rest:
  As you lie with eyes
  open or closed, may something
  comfort you—a mockingbird, a breeze, the smell
  of crushed mint, Chopin’s Nocturnes,
  your child’s birth, a kiss,
  or even me—in my chilly kitchen
  with my coat over my nightgown—thinking of you”
• 
  Rachy_reads

  poetry can be tough can’t it? I blame the way we are taught poetry in school and the poems we are made to study and then analyse. I’m not blaming our wonderful teachers more a very poorly constructed poetry curriculum. Because I believe passionately that poetry, is so god-damn personal. It speaks to us all in such different ways because our experiences are all so different. What we love is so different. The poems I love may be poems you hate and so on. For me if it rhymes too much and isn’t about passion, love, sex or feelings I don’t tend to be interested.
  Luckily this compilation from Ellen Bass of her wonderful poems covers all of the themes I love. They are so intimate and speak which such clarity and wisdom on everyday things but also the big things - “and you say, yes, I will take you / I will love you again.”
  Even when she writes about the ordinary and the mundane she puts it beautifully and for someone who is constantly anxious about whether I am wasting my life being ordinary this is a good thing.
  I enjoyed this collection of poems - as always I liked some, just read others and then BAM there were some that spoke to me so clearly they made me cry. I look forward to discovering more of her work.
• 
  C.E. G

  3.5 stars. I like her straight-forward style, her poems about aging and sex, and some of her parenting poems. This one I might share at the library for Poem of the Month:
  
  Basket of Figs
  
  Bring me your pain, love. Spread
  it out like fine rugs, silk sashes,
  warm eggs, cinnamon
  and cloves in burlap sacks. Show me
  
  the detail, the intricate embroidery
  on the collar, tiny shell buttons,
  the hem stitched the way you were taught,
  pricking just a thread, almost invisible.
  
  Unclasp it like jewels, the gold
  still hot from your body. Empty
  your basket of figs. Spill your wine.
  
  That hard nugget of pain, I would suck it,
  cradling it on my tongue like the slick
  seed of pomegranate. I would lift it
  
  tenderly, as a great animal might
  carry a small one in the private
  cave of the mouth.
• 
  Madeline Miles

  This is one of my favorite works of poetry; I’ve dog-eared so many pages. Ellen is an incredibly talented writer and poet. I had the pleasure of attending a writing workshop taught by Ellen and it was wonderful to hear her perspective on writing first-hand—I re-read Mules of Love after the workshop, and I loved discovering new things that I hadn’t noticed before. This book is a beautiful work of art! Highly recommend.
• 
  Lisa Glanville

  I absolutely LOVED this collection.
  I galloped through it, but I'm going to go back and savour these poems at a slower pace.
  She's a brilliant writer - no bullshit about her.
• 
  Edgar Trevizo

  Absolutely gorgeous. I simply adore Ellen. She always sees the connections, those tiny details that make anything shine like a sun.
• 
  Whitney Ellison

  This book of poetry was so good I just cracked open the cover to begin again.
• 
  savannah

  some of these were just weird. i didn’t expect to be reading poems about assholes as tulip blossoms, or missing “the nudge” of penises, or other things i don’t really want to write out. these were all well-written, well-structured--the similes in particular were fantastic. but did i like most of these poems? did i like what they were about? not really.
  
  all that said “the thing is” is printed out and displayed in my phone case. so i obviously think ellen bass is a great poet, and she does have a few other poems in this collection that i really love:
  
  If There Is No God
  For My Daughter on Her Twenty-First Birthday
  Oh Demeter
  The Moon
  And What If I Spoke of Despair
  
  but as a whole, after having read a stunning collection by jericho brown where i loved each poem as much as the last, this was disappointing.
• 
  GENESIS

  "And what if I spoke of despair- who doesn't
  feel it? Who doesn't know the way it seizes,
  leaving us limp, deafened by the slosh
  of our own blood, rushing
  through the narrow, personal
  channels of grief. It's beauty
  that brings it on, call it out from the wings
  for one more song. Rain
  pooled on a fallen oak leaf, reflecting
  the pale cloudy sky, dark canopy
  of foliage not yet fallen.
  Or the red moon in September."
  
  Definitely a book for restless souls like mine.
  
• 
  Jan

  Unflinchingly honest, plain-spoken yet lyrical, poems rooted in the body and everyday life. Bass is one of my favorite writers and I'll be looking for more of her books. Recommended for poetry readers and humans in general.
• 
  Bill Mayer

  If you want to read a book of poems that will cause a catch in your breath, to make you nod your head in affirmation; THIS is one of those books.
• 
  Beth Anne

  I have to admit that I love just about everything
  Ellen Bass gifts to the world through her writing, but this collection is truly one of my favorites from her! The poems in this book touch on a breadth of human experiences from love, grief, sex, children, life, etc.
  
  Here is one of my favorites-
  
  The Thing Is
  BY ELLEN BASS
  
  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 down 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.
• 
  emily

  This book started out amazingly - it had me feeling like Ellen Bass was my new favorite poet. I still love her work, but there are some poems that really just didn’t sit right with me, contrasted with poems that were some of the best I’ve ever read, truly. Whiplash! I didn’t like the way aging, fatness, and (sometimes) gender were approached and written about in the book, but the overall messages and themes were good. Some of my favorites are “His Teeth,” “Sometimes, After Making Love,” “Basket of Figs,” & “Sleeping With You.” I mean, the language/metaphors are just impeccable. Still a book worth reading, but I’m left with genuine curiosity about what the heck was going through her mind while writing some of the poems, lol. That’s what stops me from giving 5 stars.
• 
  Christen

  Not all poetry is complicated or hard to understand. Ellen Bass’s poems cut straight to the heart and are not only understable but they may help you understand yourself a little bit better. How does a stranger with a million different experiences from yourself put into words what you couldn’t? #words
• 
  Phillip

  Beautiful Engaging Direct Poems. Frequently spiked with starting image and rough sexuality. Mixture of Joy and melancholy. simple straight forward imagery.
  
  First of three volumes so far in 2nd Poetic Life.
• 
  James

  I love Bass's voice in this collection - rich with love and eroticism - even when she explores darker terrain. Her poems are intimate, caring, meaningful, compassionate, wise and even humorous when appropriate. Highly recommended.
• 
  Cynthia

  Really good. Has the wonderful poem “The Thing Is” in it! From 2002, so references are a little dated (VCR, Walkman) but still so lovely. 3.75 stars rounded up — just loved the more recent “Indigo” more.
• 
  Sebastian

  First read: June 27, 2017, Tuesday
• 
  Caroline Mcphail-Lambert

  Poems of love, life, relationships, the good, the bad, and the in between.
• 
  Natalie Serber

  Love!
• 
  Matilda

  I absolutely love Ellen Bass’s poetry and how relentlessly tender it is whilst remaining unapologetically genuine. This is the first full poetry collection i have read of hers and i adored it.
• 
  Lis

  Ellen Bass doesn’t write, she paints with her words. Vivid, vibrant images. And she’s wise. Wise about sensuality, love, motherhood, and life.
• 
  Chris

  Love, life, not sleeping, and so many other things. I love this poet's voice.