Ellen Bass I

Growing up in a Philadelphia apartment above a liquor store, poet Ellen Bass thought her childhood was “the most mundane, pedestrian, unpoetic world you could possibly live in,” but after many years and the death of her parents, she finds herself poetically inspired by that time, especially in her two recent books, Like a Beggar and The Human Line. In part one of this conversation, she also talks about being honored by the late U.S. Poet Laureate, Philip Levine in The New Yorker’s debut podcast, and gives advice through poetry for when bad things happen.