Ellen Bass’ “ How To Apologize” is a lighthearted yet sensitive take on the intricacies of human emotions and interpersonal dynamics that arise in situations when one needs to apologize to someone and the other has to accept it with grace.
Analysis: Lines 1-5
The poem begins with a suggestion to its reader. The poet is suggesting cooking a large fish with many bones. She recommends using “the flying silver crap that’s invaded the Great Lakes”. In the 1970s, silver carp were imported to North America to regulate algal growth in aquaculture and municipal wastewater treatment facilities, but they escaped containment shortly after arrival, and are now regarded a highly invasive species. If you live far from a lake, you may have to travel.
Lines 6-11
Bass suggests to her readers to take a walk since it shows that your efforts mean something. Else you could also take a train. “It’s permitted to receive solace”, In these lines, Bass introduces the central idea of the poem, which is the process of healing. Human beings often make mistakes and the author is suggesting that their worth is much more what they “did or didn’t do, pitiful, beautiful, human”.
Lines 12-16
She then goes on to narrate the story of the time when her mother fell ill and she along with her daughter cleaned her room thinking that “she wouldn’t return”. But, she recovered from her ailment and returned to her home only to find that her daughter and granddaughter had thrown out all of her shoes.
Lines 17-23
She then returns to her original subject and tells the reader that they’ll need a boat to catch a fish. The boat could be rented or bought but she suggests the reader build a boat “for the sake of repairing the world”. She advises using Western red `cedar; a North American natural evergreen coniferous tree. This insinuates a restoration of the harmony between human beings and the environment as well. She doesn’t want you to cut a tree for wood. Instead, she suggests using wood from a “demolished barn” or a “drowned trunk”.
Lines 24-30
She tells her readers to borrow things from other people. Someone may have a mill, and tools can be borrowed from someone else. She asks to take help from other people suggesting building a community. The hard work done to build the boat will be valuable since it shows the efforts made by people as a token of love for those around them. The hard work and the beautiful natural environment will make the hours worthwhile. She points to the multiple dreams that we dream of. Human beings still have the option of dreaming about things they have lost.
Lines 31-38
“So grill the pale fish”. Just as cooking converts raw material into something edible, in the very same manner, human beings need to process their grief and try to make amends with people they hurt. The act of giving the “succulent fish to the one you hurt” becomes a way in which one person is trying to help out the other to accept their mistake and forgive them. Human beings, the poetess believe are creatures who are stuck in time and do not need to defend their wrongdoings. Since it is ingrained in human nature to make mistakes, accepting your mistakes and helping others heal from the hurt it may have caused could be “just another way to know you are alive”.
Analysis of How to Apologize
Title of the poem – The title of the poem advocates that the poem is about how someone could apologize for the mistakes they may have committed.
Themes
Forgiveness – Human beings are susceptible to folly which in turn often complicates circumstances leaving the people involved hurt. The poem suggests healing from these misunderstandings and attempting to make amends in our relationships.
Environmental Preservation – The poem not only suggests making amends with fellow human beings but also with nature. With innumerable human activities, nature has suffered much harm. The poem suggests that in order to completely heal human beings will have to help restore the natural environment as well. Natural degradation will result in the degradation of society as well. Bass’ poem expresses her dissatisfaction with modern human actions, notably environmental degradation. Her poem cautions her readers to take action against these concerns.
Self-care – The theme of forgiveness extends to the person who has committed the mistake as well. The poet suggests that even people who may have committed a mistake need to heal. Guilt haunts human beings. As much as it is important to ask forgiveness from the ones we may have hurt, it is equally important to forgive ourselves.
Literary Devices –
Imagery – In a literary work, imagery is visual symbolism or figurative language that generates a mental image or other types of sense sensations.
“Cook a large fish – choose one with many bones” (line 1)
“If you don’t live near a lake, you’ll have to travel.” (line 5)
“The perfume of sawdust and the curls
that fall from your plane
will sweeten the hours.”
Alliteration – The word ‘alliteration’ is derived from the Latin littera, meaning ‘letter’. Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in the stressed syllables of successive or nearly successive words.
“There is much to fear as a creature caught in time,”
Symbolism – A symbol is anything that alludes to something else, usually something abstract like an idea or a belief. An object, a person, a scenario, or an action that has a literal meaning in a story but indicates or reflects other meanings is referred to as a literary symbol.
“Walking is best and shows you mean it.”
“build your own”
“Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt.”
The poem is a beautiful literary piece and Bass has used two very prominent concerns of the society in which we live today. It can be placed in accordance with the growing environmental concern which is an important issue of the twenty-first century. Healing and giving importance to self is also something that human beings are learning today. There is a growing understanding of self-care and it is not treated as a selfish act. In order to survive in this fast paced world, it is rather very important to take care of oneself as well as those around us.
Bass’ poem appears as a self-help guide to people who are struggling with seeking forgiveness from others. The most likely reason for this is that Bass is best known for her self-help books for childhood sexual abuse survivors, the most well-known of which is The Courage to Heal (1988). Bass also wrote Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth (1996), a book intended to help gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth deal with difficulties of sexual identity. While “How to Apologize” has a different theme than most of Bass’s earlier works, it nonetheless deals with unpleasant issues such as environmental degradation and hurt, rather than child abuse.
Throughout the poem, Bass guides her readers and tells them what steps are necessary and what can be avoided. She has weaved community issues into personal ones and attempts to guide the readers to come out of them. The images of cooking and building a new boat insinuate the building of something new, something which is going to bridge the existing gap and would mark the beginning of a new phase. This new phase would be out of the mutual concern and love and would heal personal as well as environmental degradation.
Ellen Bass
Ellen Bass is a poet and a teacher who grew up in New Jersey. She graduated from Boston University with a master’s degree in creative writing, where she studied under Anne Sexton. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ellen Bass was selected to receive a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for 2021. Her books include Indigo, which was awarded a New York Times Notable Book, as well as Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Ellen co-edited No More Masks!, the first major anthology of women’s poetry, in 1973. Her non-fiction titles include The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian, and Bi-Sexual Youth. Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council are among her honours, as are three Pushcart Prizes, the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod, the Larry Levis Prize from The Missouri Review, the New Letters Poetry Prize, the Greensboro Poetry Prize, and the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, and a variety of other publications. Ellen started poetry workshops in the jails of Salinas Valley State Prison and Santa Cruz. She and her wife live in Santa Cruz, California. Bass has a straightforward and confrontational style of writing poetry. She has noted:
“I work to speak in a voice that is meaningful communication. Poetry is the most intimate of all writing. I want to speak from me to myself and then from me to you.”
