At its core this poem, like all poems, is about emotions. In this particular case the speaker struggles with her mother-in-law’s worsening dementia. However most of the poem doesn’t mention dementia specifically but instead highlights parts of everyday life that seep through the speaker’s resolve and cause her to question the purpose of living. In fact the only time the speaker explicitly refers to the dementia is through the line “she can’t remember who’s alive and dead.”
Instead what I love is that Bass infuses the rest of the poem with a strong sense of the speaker’s voice and emotions — weariness, regret and a tiny bit of hope — rather than focusing on the disease. Each part of the poem serves to give new insight into the speaker’s state of mind and the poem’s meaning.
For example as the speaker thinks about, suffocating herself, she realizes, “I wouldn’t have to / move our Weber. I could just slide / down the stucco to the flagstones.”
The speaker is consumed by her own weary acceptance and tries to convince herself that death would be convenient. And in the final stanza, in what are probably my favorite lines, the speaker ponders, “Oxygen, oxygen, the cry of the body — and you always want to give it / what it wants. But I must say no — / enough, enough / with more tenderness / than I have ever given to a lover.”
She realizes that after a certain point, it has become easier for her to contemplate dying than to continue suffering. And yet she also laments that “It will never be enough... Oh blame life. That we just want more. / Summer rain. Mud. A cup of tea... And hot showers, oh lovely, lovely hot showers.” She asks herself “this little hat of life, how will I bear / to take it off while I can still reach up?”
It’s here that simple mentions of everyday joys like hot showers and drinking tea evoke such great emotion and pity in the reader since we all can relate to these simple pleasures. Bass reveals the transience of the speaker’s thoughts of suicide, her vulnerability springs from her despair with these poignant images.
In fact the imagery she uses shifts between concrete descriptions of nature and memories, between external reminders of why she is still alive and more speculative figurative language as she wonders whether death is the next step in grieving and when it might be okay to say “enough.”
As it’s written, this poem may raise more questions than it answers regarding the speaker and her mother-in-law’s struggles. For example we hear very little about the actual mother-in-law in a poem that’s supposedly about how this family is dealing with her dementia. We never know whether the speaker actually commits suicide. We don’t know what would happen to her mother-in-law if she does.
At first I grappled with the idea that the speaker’s thoughts of suicide were selfish, but what I think this poem is trying to say is that suffering is relative only to yourself. I like the idea that the speaker grants us a small glimpse into her internal emotional struggle, reminding us that a lot of the pain caused by an incurable disease is collateral.
After reading this poem, I decided to look up Ellen Bass. I came across more of her poetry, which she has also published in poetry collections, online. Once again, Bass heightens readers’ visual awareness by weaving strong and unexpected images together to challenge readers’ perceptions of everyday activities, actions and objects.
In her poem “Saturn’s Rings,” for example, Bass laments “the world breaking / like glass under a microscope, / the way it doesn’t crack all at once, / but spreads out from the damaged cavities.”
For National Poetry Month I highly encourage those who want to read more poetry to subscribe to Poem-a-Day through the Academy of American Poets. What I appreciate about the Poem-a-Day feature is that it showcases not only famous classic poets, but also fresh contemporary poets, many of whom the general public have never heard about. Perhaps you’ll find an Ellen Bass just as I have.
