Palettes & Quills is delighted to have as its final judge for this poetry chapbook contest, poet Ellen Bass. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ellen currently resides in Santa Cruz, California where she has been teaching poetry and creative writing for thirty-five years. Currently she is also on the faculty for Pacific University’s low residency MFA program.
Her most recent book of poems, The Human Line, was published by Copper Canyon Press in June 2007. Previously, she co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973) and published several volumes of poetry, including Mules of Love (BOA, 2002) which won the Lambda Literary Award.
Ellen’s poems have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, including The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and Field. She was awarded the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati, Nimrod/Hardman's Pablo Neruda Prize, The Missouri Review's Larry Levis Award, the Greensboro Poetry Prize, the New Letters Poetry Prize, and others.
Ellen Bass Interview
Being quite excited to have such an eminent poet working with Palettes & Quills to select the winner of this chapbook contest, I am reprinting* a “virtual interview” I had with Ellen earlier this year, which I hope helps you become better acquainted with both Ellen and her wonderful poetry.
Donna M. Marbach: When and how did you get started writing poetry?
Ellen Bass: I started writing poetry in college and published my first book, I'm Not Your Laughing Daughter, in 1973, the same year Florence Howe and I published No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women. Florence, who went on to found and direct The Feminist Press, had been my teacher at Goucher College and invited me to work with her on this anthology. It's hard to imagine now, but at that time there were no anthologies of women's poetry and women poets were underrepresented in standard anthologies. Working on this book with Florence was an opportunity of a lifetime. I was in my early twenties with lots of time on my hands and my job was to read just about every poem by every woman poet writing in the twentieth century in the U.S.!
DMM: That indeed was an envious opportunity. We’re always telling our readers that if one wants to write well, it is important to read widely. Who are some of your favorite poets? Or poets who have influenced your work?
EB: Oh this is an impossible list to make because there are so many. But some of my earliest beloved poets were T.S. Eliot, ee cummings, Keats, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Byron, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, and Denise Levertov. Some of my current favorites (though there are many more than these) are Dorianne Laux, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Joe Millar, Frank Gaspar, and Gerald Stern.
DMM: Tell us a little bit about how you yourself write? Do you write everyday—getting up at four o’clock in the morning like William Stafford or sporadically when something inspires you? Do you require a special pen or notebook? Are you a napkin scribbler or do you compose on the computer?
EB: I wish I wrote every day, but I don't. I write in cycles, when I can. I usually write first in a plain notebook. Then later, at some point in the revision process, I transcribe the poem onto the computer. I don't like to have a "special" anything. Having as few requirements as possible leaves me with more flexibility.
DMM: Speaking of revisions, how many revisions do you usually do before you are satisfied with a poem?
EB: Many many revisions. Years of them!
DMM: Have you ever revised a poem even after it’s been published?
EB: Oh yes, I've often revised poems once they've been published in magazines and journals. Usually by the time a poem gets into a book, that's its final form, but occasionally, I’ll make small changes even then.
DMM: When you started sending out your work for publication, approximately what was your acceptance to rejection rate? Were you ever discouraged?
EB: I got many many, many rejections for each acceptance, but I was undaunted. I just kept sending. I love this passage from Martha Graham, which I think speaks to both the rejection and the discouragement:
There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is
translated through you into action. And because there is only
one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you
block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and
be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to
determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it
compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep
it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do
not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to
keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open. No artist is ever pleased. There is no
satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine
dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and
makes us more alive than the others."
DMM: Those are indeed inspiring words for all of us still struggling with numerous rejections. But now that you are an established—award-winning poet—do you find it easier to get your work published?
EB: Yes, but there are still plenty of rejections.
DMM: I guess, rejections are something that we as writers just have to accept as part of the process. Now that you’re in a position to judge emerging writers’ work, tell us what you think makes a good poem?
EB: Almost every poet who writes about poetry talks about the concept of discovery because this is at the essence of the poem. To tell a story you already know is not a poem. It's reporting something that's already happened. Instead, we want the experience to happen, to be enacted, within the poem itself.
DMM: What kinds of things about a poem will immediately “turn you off” to it?
EB: Some things that keep me out of the poem are vagueness, a lack of clarity about what's going on, a lack of attention to language, many general words (such as soul, grief, happiness) without the support of detail or particularity, predictability in language and thought.
DMM: Some people believe that you need the discipline of an MFA to write good poetry and thus look closely at credentials and prior publications. Others believe that good poetry has to allude to other poets or to fall into specific poetic schools. When judging a chapbook, what do you look for, if anything, besides good poetry?
EB: I look only for good poetry. That's all that matters.
DMM: In order for a chapbook to be a winner, does every poem in it have to be exceptional?
EB: Well, if we could do that, it would be great, wouldn't it? I think a more reasonable goal is to make every poem as good as we can possibly make it, given our level of talent and development. All we can do is work very hard and do our very best. Which—even if it wins—will never be good enough, but that's why poetry is an art. The better our writing gets, the better we'll want to make it—so it's a lifelong study.
DMM: Should the poems be of a single theme?
EB: They can be, but that's not necessary. I'd rather see good poems than thematically related poems.
DMM: Should there at least be a logical order or progression to the pieces?
EB: It's good to put the poems in an order that doesn't unnecessarily jerk the reader around. But I'm less concerned about order than about the individual poems.
DMM: If you were to give one last piece of advice to emerging poets on how they might become better poets, what would it be?
EB: Read, read, read. Read the poets you admire and try to figure out how they do what they do. Model your own work on theirs. Study, study, study. And try to find a mentor who can guide your writing toward its full potential.
DMM: Writing good poetry and being able to get easily published are two different things. What advice do you have for poets who want to see their work or more of their work published?
EB: I'll tell you what my own mentor, Dorianne Laux, told me when I was trying to get more of my work published. She said, "You have to make the poems so good that they have to take them." So that's basically it. Work harder.
*This interview originally appeared (in a slightly altered form) in Byline magazine's February 2008 issue (p.8-10)