The Human Line

by Bass, Ellen

• ISBN13: 9781556592553
• ISBN10: 1556592558
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-06-01
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Pr

Summary

"Poetry," writes best-selling author Ellen Bass, "is the way I pay attention, appreciate, give praise, struggle, grieve, rage, and pray. It's the way I embody my love for the world." The Human Line, Bass' seventh book of poems, startles with its precise detail, intimate images, and wild metaphors. Bass brings attention to life's endearing absurdities, and many of the poems flash with a keen sense of humor. She also faces many of the crucial moral dilemmas of our time-genetic engineering, environmental issues, continuous war, heterosexism-and grounds her vision in the small, private workings of the heart. A . . . When I get home, my son has a headache, and though he's almost grown, asks me to sing him a song. We lie together on the lumpy couch and I warble out the old show tunes, Night and Day . . . They Can't Take That Away from Me . . . A cheap silver chain shimmers across his throat rising and falling with his pulse. There never was anything else. Only these excruciatingly insignificant creatures we love. Ellen Bass is co-author of the million-selling book Courage to Heal. She lives and teaches in Santa Cruz, California.

Table of Contents

Sleeping in my mother's bed	p. 5
Twilight from the window of my mother's hospital room	p. 7
On the air	p. 9
My father's day	p. 11
My mother's clock	p. 13
Eating the bones	p. 14
Last night	p. 15
The end	p. 16
Angels	p. 18
Ritual	p. 20
My mother's painting	p. 22
Asking directions in Paris	p. 27
Gate C22	p. 29
Discovering fire	p. 31
Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh	p. 32
Poem not for my son	p. 34
Birdsong from my patio	p. 36
Evolution	p. 38
The human line	p. 43
Dead butterfly	p. 45
Subway in Madrid	p. 46
Screaming	p. 47
A child is born	p. 49
If you knew	p. 50
At the end of the Cenozoic era	p. 52
I wake thinking about depleted uranium	p. 54
When the young geneticist was asked, "aren't you worried about the implications of your work?" with a toss of her sun-streaked hair, she declared, "no, not at all. I can't wait to fuck a clone"	p. 56
God's grief	p. 59
The moment I knew I shouldn't have married my husband	p. 63
Lost dog	p. 64
Is you is	p. 65
MIKE	p. 67
In praise of four-letter words	p. 69
Sad bitch	p. 71
The woman who killed my cat	p. 72
The big picture	p. 74
Pray for peace	p. 79
Giving rocks to rocks	p. 82
God of roots	p. 83
Your hand	p. 84
The chair	p. 86
Don't expect applause	p. 87
Winter Solstice	p. 89
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.