Patricia Harrelson

I recently spent 3 days working with Ellen Bass at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. Dorianne Laux says that Bass creates “poetry that goes straight to the heart.” Her books, Mules of Love and The Human Line, are smart, intimate, and insightful. Ellen Bass is also a marvelous teacher. She guided 15 aspiring poets over the course of three days, goading us to take risks and make discoveries.

Here a few tidbits gleaned from the notes I took during Ellen’s workshop:

• If writing something scares you, you need to write about it anyway because unwritten poems sit in the chute and everything else you try to write has to squeeze its way around. Write the poem (or the essay or story) without thinking about who will see it. Write everything; Don’t publish everything.
• Take risks in language as well as in content. Write metaphors that are weird. Fresh metaphors keep the reader off balance. Avoid clichés and over-used metaphors. Writers need to learn to tolerate a high level of “not workingness” in the process of stretching the metaphor muscle.  Gertrude Stein said that we are living in a period of late language; every day it has been around a little longer. For this reason, writers have to reach a long way to find freshness.
• Read brave poems/essays; keep one by your computer to read when you get scared.
• Discovery means the writer takes the reader to something not already known. Endings need be both surprising and inevitable. Endings are hard to come by. Writers need to be receptive and/or they need to hunt for their ending. If the ending is a surprise to the writer, it will be a surprise to the reader. Robert Frost says, “No surprise for the writer; no surprise for the reader.”
• Stay open to associations. In early drafts, allow the story to veer off. When you feel like you are loosing control, keep writing. See how far you can get from the subject without breaking the tension. Allow things to come in from left field.
• Ask questions: Why are you writing this story now? What is your agency in the story? Your complicity? What has never been said before about this thing you are considering?
• Disturb the story as you know it. Tell it anew from another character’s viewpoint. Look for ways to shake up the story: This is what I didn’t say! This is what I meant to say!

Ellen Bass gave me much to think about. However, I believe my work will develop if I simply remember to take risks and seek discovery!