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:
Ellen Bass Links
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A grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at war with each other.
One of them is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred and fear.
The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”
The grandfather quietly replies, the one you feed
The Tale of Two Wolves is often attributed to the Cherokee indians but there seems to be no real proof of this. It has also been attributed to evangelical preacher Billy Graham and Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw. It appears no one knows for sure but this does not diminish the power of the parable.
This parable goes by many names including:
The Tale of Two Wolves
The Parable of the Two Wolves
Two Wolves
Which Wolf Do You Feed
Which Wolf are You Feeding
Which Wolf Will You Feed
It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs
gadao says
Eric Zimmer,thank you for your blog post.Really thank you! Awesome.