Ellen Bass: Ellen Bass on the Power of Poetry in Your Life

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Ellen Bass is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her work has won award after award and rightly so - there's something so powerful, beautiful, true and often times darkly funny in her work. She says that writing poetry - as well as reading it - is an inquiry more than a description. Isn't that an interesting perspective to consider? In this episode, you'll hear her read some of her work, share her insights and experiences in life, talk about the process of writing poetry and offer some ideas that perhaps you had not considered before - especially in the way she does. Regardless of whether or not you think of yourself as a lover of poetry, you'll be touched by this episode.

She is the author of Like a Beggar, The Human Line, Mules of Love, and The Courage to Heal

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In This Interview, Ellen Bass and I Discuss...

• The Wolf Parable

• Her book, Like a Beggar •

• That poetry is an inquiry more than a description

• Discovering something about oneself when writing and reading poetry

• Her poem, Relax

• Tasting life

• Thinking about how you are "right now"

• The role of finding similarities in disparate things when using metaphor

• The oneness of the world

• Working hard in the chair to be a poet

• How no one would expect a person to pick up a saxophone and immediately be able to play and the same is true for writing poetry

• Her poem, Asking Directions in Paris

• Using God in her poetry

• Her poem, If You Knew

• How because of mortality, one day, we as individuals are going to lose everything

• That poetry helps us to see deeply into the beauty of things that are right in front of us

• Introducing poetry to others as you would a novel

• The important role of humor

• Poets she mentioned:

Marie Howe Jericho Brown Natalie Diaz

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