"The Thing Is," by Ellen Bass
Let's gather after a brief time to read a poem full of hope and resilience.
Hello gatherers! I apologize for the lapse in posts–I’m in the midst of big life changes and my mind has not been in my writing. But here I am again, returning as I often do to verse.
Change is overwhelming me. I live comfortably in the before and after, but the middle of change is challenging for me. It makes me anxious and unfocused. The thing is, I am so excited about what’s to come in my life including all of its challenges and unpredictability. I am learning how to live in this liminal space, and I’ve found this poem settles me on the evenings when I am particularly tense.
I don’t know if I am all the way present in my writing here yet, but the poem “The Thing Is” by Ellen Bass is a delight, and I hope you gather with me here to read it.
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.
Bass establishes the circumstance of this piece right from the beginning, using the title of the
poem as the first line: “The thing is / to love life, to love it even / when you have no stomach for it.” The phrase to love life is colloquial, a common feeling that may compel someone to pick up a new hobby, to read a self-help book, to live life to the fullest. When we use the phrase to love life, we use the word love in the way we would when talking to a friend about an actor whose work we enjoy, or a cafe who makes our coffee just right.
In this poem, Bass challenges the reader to invoke a deeper love in your life. She sets the scene: everything you’ve ever held dear crumbles, you’re feeling suffocated by the grief of existence, and you can’t fathom how a person could handle this much feeling. Bass challenges the reader “to love life” in spite of all that dares you not to. I admire the phrase at the beginning of the poem where Bass suggests that there may be times when you can’t even stomach life.
The driving force of unhappiness, of depression, in this poem is grief. There is so much to grieve. There are people, places, things, stories, memories; there are also favorite pens, there are frequented restaurants that have closed, there are friends you have fallen out of contact with, and there are plans that will never come to fruition. All of this grief is heavy, and it can be difficult to live with the weight of it all, or as Bass elegantly writes, “an obesity of grief.” In the midst of all of this living and all of this weight, Bass understands that any normal person may say “How can a body withstand this?”
Bass, in all of her kindness, offers a balm at the beginning and end of the poem. We, readers, know that the thing is to love life. And how do we do that? We cradle this life in our palms and look in its eyes. There is nothing special about this life–it is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither charming nor malicious. We look at this plain life and say “yes, I will take you / I will love you, again.”
I think I keep coming back to this poem because Bass turns to me at the end. She turns to the reader and says you there, try this. She gives the reader permission to do what she understands is inherently very difficult, to love life despite all that we live through. There are times when I can’t possibly look at life in its face, much less hold it and tell it I will love it again. I love this poem because it reminds me that the possibility is always around the corner.
If you enjoyed this poem… you can read more by Ellen Bass here.
If you you are looking for your next read… I cannot recommend Leslie Jamison’s captivating memoir Splinters—a meditation on motherhood, love, and divorce.
If you want to try writing poetry… make the first line of your poem the title. Challenge yourself to come up with a compelling first line, and see what you create from there.