Dear Ellen Bass 2021

Dear Ms. Bass,

My name is Hanna, and I am a junior at Edina High School in Minnesota. In my AP U.S. Literature class, I came across your poem, “Kiss,” and felt an immediate connection. The poem didn’t necessarily feel like something I could write—at least not at my current poetic skill level—but more like something I would write, an articulation of ideas and feelings I’ve been pondering but didn’t quite know how to put on paper. It describes a desperate desire to be one with all kinds of creatures and critters, to feel equally essential and cared for in the eyes of nature.

The way I see it, “Kiss” is inseparable from the deliberately feminine energy coursing through it. The ideas in the poem are presented to us through the eyes of Lynne and a strong feminine voice is created with its soft, affectionate diction. The voice is only strengthened by the direct references to babies and motherhood: “body limp as a baby / drunk on milk” (4-5), “silky breast” (6), “tiny puff” (16), “first breath” (23). Comparing Lynne’s rescue of the lizard to interactions between a mother and a baby expresses the honest love and tenderness behind her intentions. It’s a special relationship that everyone has been on one side of, but not all will ever experience the other. I can’t quite wrap my head around what this poem would sound like if it were written from a man’s perspective. That desire to protect the smallest animals, simply for the sake of protecting what is good, seems contradictory to the way mankind has treated the natural world for the last few centuries. Do you think it would still work? Or is this poem’s voice restrictively feminine? Would you consider yourself a feminist poet?

Through that same comparison, nature and innocence are made synonymous with one another. A small lizard has as much potential for greatness as a human baby. The tone is doting and careful, pressing home the idea that all living things are precious, and should be treated as such. To truly separate oneself from the notion that humans are above the natural world is a beautiful, freeing thing. So often we think of ourselves as nature’s rulers, but we are just as much a part of it as the humble lizard. From that truth comes a value of kindness; we are all one in nature, so every living thing should be treated with respect and reverence. How did you intend to portray the relationship between humans and nature? How do you think the material world separates us from our origins in nature?

Upon further research, I was pleasantly surprised to find out you are a lesbian. Being a young gay woman myself, I was excited to hear poetry I could relate to. Even with all the progressivism in the education system, I still have rarely come across any sort of discussion about LGBTQ history or issues in my educational career. I have always had to seek out representation on my own in order to understand that part of my identity. So, it made sense I felt myself so drawn to your work. How much do you think your sexuality influences your work? I could be wrong, but certain moments, like the reference to Lynne’s Doc Martens in “Kiss,” felt like subtle nods to queer culture, a secret language between you and any readers that can crack the code. Furthermore, what LGBTQ topics, if any, do you think should schools should educate their student about? What queer artists, or works of art—in any medium—make you feel connected to your sexuality?

Sincerely,

Hanna

Dear Ellen Bass,

Hi, my name is Sami and I am from East middle school MI in the 6th grade and I am writing to you about your poem Kiss.

I used to not like poems but when I had to do a unit on them in class we were given an opportunity to choose our own poem to write about and when I saw yours I just had to read. The name just pulled me in and when I found out it was about a girl named Lynne just trying to help a lizard, I loved it even more. You have made me see the beauty of poems. I looked at many different poems trying to find the perfect one with a deep meaning and your poem Kiss was perfect. The lines

“When Lynne saw the lizard floating

in her mother-in-law’s swimming pool,”

she jumped in”

reminds me so much of this one time when I ripped one of my favorite stuffed animals and I was learning to sew at the time. I took it into my mom's room and got the thread and needles out and made 8 wiggly, zigzag, curved, crossed, layered stitches. It was so imperfect but it made me love it more. This poem reminded me of a memory that I will now cherish that was beginning to be lost in the back of my mind.

I feel the meaning of the poem is to never let any little deed go to waste. I believe that when the lizard scurried off it went back home to its family whether it was a child or an adult, but to get back to its loved ones. To share it experience and to pass on what Lynne had taught him, given him how she had given him freedom, she had given him hope, she had given him an opportunity, she had given him life by one action, one thought, one kiss had given the lizard all those things.

Your poem had opened my eyes as no other poem had before. Your poem has made me appreciate what you love. What I know love. Just like in the poem how Lynne had given all those things to the Lizard you have given me so much too by just giving me words. By giving me a poem. I hope you read my letter.

Sami

Dear Ellen Bass,

My name is Josie, and I am a junior at George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology (it’s a mouthful, I know) in Maryland. When I first read “Kiss”, I immediately thought of the book Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo. I had recently reread the book because an (unwatchable) movie adaptation came out and I wanted to re-experience the story. In the book’s beginning, the main character Flora, just like Lynne, saves the life of a small animal through CPR—“the kiss of life”. I love making connections between poetry and other pieces of art and life experience, and as I continued reading “Kiss”, I found a connection to another story. It’s a parable by Loren Eisley, the story of a boy who walks along the sealine, the banks of which are littered with starfish that washed upon the beach and can’t return to the sea. The boy picks up each starfish he passes and returns them to the ocean. An old man walks by and asks—just as you ask in your poem—why it matters to save the starfish. There are so many on the shores, he says, that the boy won’t be able to make a difference. The boy throws another starfish in the ocean, turns to the man, and says: “It made a difference to that one.” This story answers a question you ask in “Kiss”: What did it matter if she saved one lizard? / One lizard more or less in the world?” It mattered to the lizard, and it mattered to Lynne.

Seeing as this project is being done in poetry class, you might ascertain that I enjoy poetry, both the reading and writing of it. I also prefer working in freeform, though rhyme schemes can be fun as well. How do you choose where to break your lines? I feel like my line breaks are boring and predictable, but yours flowed so naturally, it was like I was descending a staircase of poetry as I read. All the details you include stay fresh in my mind after I read them, like the camo shirt having the neck ripped out, or the way she pressed on the lizard’s chest like she was testing the ripeness of a peach. I’ve noticed that you write about babies and eyelids a lot, sometimes at the same time. In “Indigo”, you wrote about a sleeping baby with translucent eyelids, in “The Sound of Their Names” you praised suffragists’ closing eyes, and in “Gate C22” you described the man looking at his love like a mother at her newborn child. In “Kiss” these are mentioned as the lizard lays “limp as a baby drunk on milk” until its “wrinkled lids peeled back”. Why do you always come back to these ideas?

Is Lynne a real person? If so, what is your relation to her? I think we would all be lucky to have somebody like Lynne in our lives. I’ve never saved any lizards, but I remember a few years ago at my summer camp, an absolute army of frogs wound up trapped in our pool skimmers. Submergence in chlorine is not the ideal situation for frogs, as you may have guessed. We scooped up each frog, ran some fresh water over them to remove any chemicals, and released them in the woods by the stream. Sometimes, just like with Lynne, we wouldn’t know if the frog was alive or dead until “its muscles roused” in the warm air. Unlike the lizard, they were usually too tired from accidentally drinking cyanuric acid to immediately dart away.

Because of the Corona virus, I already missed a year at my summer camp, and I’ll probably miss the next as well. But reading “Kiss” reminded me of the woods and the animals, the dirt and the counselors, everything I love about my time there. Thank you, not only for writing this poem, but for giving me a piece of camp to hold onto while I’m away.

Sincerely,

Josephine

Dear Ms. Ellen Bass,

My name is Cecilia and I am in 11th grade at Roland Park Country School in Baltimore, Maryland.

My selection of your poem was based off of the relationship between the title “Kiss” and the interior contents of the poem. Although the word “kiss” is generally associated with themes such as love and lust, I interpreted the meaning behind the poem to be more about the importance of a life and the lengths that one should go to in order to preserve it. I was fascinated by the contradiction in this where upon immediate glance the poem could be inferred to be about love, but instead I found it to be about life and therefore it can give a new meaning to the idea of love.

I often ponder the question, “Why do I matter” or “What makes me special” and your poem furthered my dive into these questions. These questions reminded me of the lines, “What did it matter if she saved one lizard?” and, “One lizard more or less in the world?”. Did you intend these lines to represent similar questions? In your poem the value of a small life has been put at such high importance, particularly when the small lizard is saved through CPR by the woman. This imagery of the woman pressing her lips to the lizard's face and blowing a puff of air into his lungs shows the intricate nature of her attempt to save the lizard. This made me realize that there is a high significance in the lives of all living creatures and that we are all needed in the world to make an impact. The line, “But she bestowed the kiss of life, again and again” I found to symbolize the perseverance of finding value in your life and then finding your purpose. Finally at the end of the poem when the lizard is revived and scurries off, I interpreted as someone who has found their purpose and moved into society to share their life. This then connects back to the title of “kiss” and the “kiss of life” in that the love of life has become a part of the person. Was the idea behind the “kiss of life” to bestow the figurative meaning of life back into a person? Have you ever felt a time when you lost all hope and were then restored with a purpose for living?

I wanted to thank you for writing this poem and making it available for me to analyze. It allowed me to explore what value I put on life and to wonder in the marvel that being alive truly is. I hope to soon find my purpose and passion, “before darting off”.

Cecilia 

Dear Ellen Bass,

I sat confined to my little desk, enclosed by big glass walls, silenced by the cloth over my mouth, re-reading your poem over and over again, trying to understand what you wanted to tell me. The sound of my highlighter running over the text was deafening, the vibrant colors blinding, and I just didn’t get the point. I stuffed the paper back into my bag and pushed past the wooden door of my English classroom, and forgot about your story. Later that day, I sat precariously on the edge of my bed after school, and I found myself thinking again, “Why is this so good?” After a week’s worth of in-class assignments, and a couple of snow days, I realized that my favorite thing about your poem was the big question that it posed: What will one good deed, one life saved, one action do to impact the rest of the world? I also noticed that you focus on the little details, and make them remarkable. This, Ms. Bass, is why I love this poem so much. Intentional or not, the way that your writing asks so many complex and thought-provoking questions with some simple imagery is so intricate and beautiful, and it overall is just a great poem to read and analyze.

While researching a little bit about your life and your other works, I came across an interview of you by Wallace Ludel for BOMB Magazine, and I found myself caught by some of your answers. Some questions I found myself asking during my first analysis of “Kiss” were, “Why is she focusing on these details? Why the unnecessary comparisons?” In one part of your interview where you were talking about your poem “Fungus on Fallen Alder at Lookout Creek,” you said, “When there’s an insect that looks like a speck, she always runs to get the hand lens...Suddenly we see that there’s this absolutely amazing construction—thorax, abdomen, legs, antennae, eyes...It’s extraordinary.” Reading this was sort of like my “Aha!” moment. I realized that you intentionally created this magnification of such a mundane action, an action that doesn’t at first seem to have much of a meaning. The poem focuses on the small specific details instead of the bigger, more vague descriptions. I didn’t fail to notice that this idea intricately connects to the big question, “Does saving one life, doing one good thing, even matter?” Referring to the insect comparison you used in your interview, each tiny and fragile part of an insect is so important to the way that it functions, to how it is able to live. I guess this idea of zooming in on the small things of life is your way of showing that in your eyes, yes, every little action matters, every detail, every effect is important.

Another thing that I noticed about “Kiss” is the play between life and death. The use of juxtaposition and contrast is something else that I found particularly intriguing. In the poem, you used phrases such as “the ripeness of peach,” “big plush lips,” and “a broke little push with a bit of spring in it.” At least to me, these words convey a sense of liveliness and animation, and words like ripe, plush, and spring remind me of describing life However, these phrases stood out to me because they contrasted with the overarching image shown through the poem, about a dying lizard, which obviously suggests death. In some of your other works, I noticed a similar pattern of mortality emerging through the lines, and I realized once again that this concept ties in with the main ideas of the poem. With your opposing ideas of life and death, the poem indirectly illustrates the clashing answers of different opinions that people may have to this question of the effect of everyday actions on everyday life. However, I believe that you are hinting that these seemingly mundane actions have an important ripple effect on our lives. When you asked the question, “What did it matter if she saved one lizard?” on line 17 of the poem, I think you answered it by showing the action of Lynne saved the lizard, telling the reader that yes, saving the lizard did matter.

Despite reading over this poem many, many times, I was still left with a couple of questions. First, I noticed that there is a repetitive “s” sound occurring throughout the poem. Was this intentional? If so, what does it mean? Second, why were the comparisons of your poem so abstract? Why were they included at all? Overall, I really enjoyed reading this poem, and I think it is partly because of my interest in philosophy. As a person going to an all-girls private school, I was required to take an ethics course this year, and if I’m being honest, it was not something that I was really interested in. Throughout the course, I found myself slowly enjoying learning about ethical topics more and more, and so I began to do my own research. I started off with reading only about ethics, but I began to look more into the philosophical field and exploring the ideas between life and death. Your poem brings up one of my favorite questions, which is about the importance of doing good, and the impact of one good action. After all, we are just tiny clumps of carbon, living on a giant floating rock. So, I’ll end by asking you, Ms. Bass; why should we do good things, and why does it matter?

Sincerely,

Aadya

Dear Ellen Bass,

Hello, my name is Yuze and I am currently in grade 7 at Branton Junior High. After reading your poem “Kiss”, I decided to write to you because of the strong message I managed to decipher from your array of wisely chosen words. To be honest, I was half daydreaming about how I can win this contest while listening to your recording of the poem when I heard the lines;

“What did it matter if she saved one lizard? One lizard more or less in the world?” (Lines 17 and 18)

At once, my daydreams scattered, replaced by the terrifying accuracy and reality of those phrases. My thoughts shifted to the memory of one day a few years ago. I was biking with my friend when I caught seeing something move in the tall grass. I pointed it out to him and we went over to investigate. It turned out to be an injured bunny which was obviously wounded on its left leg because of the dried-up blood marks. There was spilt blood all around its curled up legs. My friend asked if calling the local Animal Rescue Society was necessary, but I stated that leaving it here wouldn’t cause any troubles and besides, we were both worried about our parents grounding us for being foolish enough to approach an injured animal who could be carrying any amount of diseases or sickness. But, those were mostly excuses hiding my main thought which was similar to Lynne’s; would one less animal in the world even matter?

Rabbits and humans have many similarities, but the one that stands out the most is that the two are both animals, although humans hate to be described that way because of our high ranking in the animal hierarchy. If you ever see an injured person anywhere, without hesitation, you would immediately fish out your phone and dial 911 or seek someone else to make the call for you. Then, more and more people will rush over to assist if needed. Now imagine you see a hurt animal. The most common human reaction would be to have a panic attack, or to try and get away from the injured animal as quickly as possible and continue on with their business, putting the animal out of sight and out of mind. Only rarely, you see someone willing to assist and call animal supports. It is an instinct to help out others from your own species, therefore, leaving the injured bunny to be dealt with by other rabbits. We humans have a wide selection of highly advanced medical treatments at our disposal, but what about the rabbit? The best thing it can ask for is to have some comfort while it slowly heals or fades away. So why the imbalance of importance for different species? Is it because humans dominate the food chain and those beneath us are merely organisms that also happen to be alive? That’s what's so dark about humans, most of them don’t care about animals of lower significance.

Until I read your poem, I always thought of poetry as requiring a rhyme scheme or following a certain syllabic pattern. After reading “Kiss”, I found the true meaning of poetry is more than trying to act smart with rhyming or strangle syllable patterns, but instead to tell the readers the wonderful things that exist in our world whose beauty we might otherwise overlook. Your poem’s structure is one I've never seen before; there wasn’t any rhyming, nor syllable pattern that I found, so may I ask what type of poetry style was “Kiss” based off of? May I also ask how did you come up with this brilliant poem? Did something similar happen to you? Thanks for writing this great and inspiring poem. It would be great if everyone would learn the lesson that all lives are important, including those of different organisms! Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Sincerely,

Yuze