{"id":1233,"date":"2025-03-15T03:52:49","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T03:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/any-common-desolation\/"},"modified":"2025-03-15T03:52:49","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T03:52:49","slug":"any-common-desolation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/any-common-desolation\/","title":{"rendered":"Any Common Desolation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou may have to break your heart, but it isn\u2019t nothing to know even one moment alive.\u201d<\/h3>\n
\n

\"Any<\/a><\/p>\n

The morning after a relationship of depth and significance long bending under the weight of its own complexity had finally broken with an exhausted thud, I opened the kiln to discover a month\u2019s worth of pottery shattered \u2014 two pieces had exploded, the shrapnel ruining the rest. All that centering, all that glazing, all the hours of pressing letterforms into the wet clay \u2014 all of it in shiny shards. And meanwhile spring was breaking outside and a little girl in bright blue rain boots was jumping in a puddle, smashing the reflections of the clouds with savage joy. <\/p>\n

And I thought, this is all there is: breaking, breaking apart, breaking open. <\/p>\n

Breaking alive. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Card from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days<\/em><\/a>, also available as a stand-alone print<\/a> and as greeting cards<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is not an easy assignment, being alive. Coming awake from the stupor of near-living that lulls us through our days, awake to the knowledge that on the other side of the neighborhood ICE trucks are handcuffing people and on the other side of the planet children are dying in gunfire, while outside the first birds of spring are singing and everywhere people are falling in love and in some faraway mountain village a shepherd is singing under a thousand stars. And somehow, somehow, all of it has to cohere into a single world in which we, in all our incohesion, must live this single life. <\/p>\n

Ellen Bass<\/a> reckons with all of this in her splendid poem \u201cAny Common Desolation,\u201d originally published in The Academy of American Poets\u2019 poem-a-day<\/a> newsletter and later included in James Crews\u2019s lifeline of an anthology How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), shared here with Ellen\u2019s blessing. <\/p>\n\n

\n

ANY COMMON DESOLATION
\nby Ellen Bass<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

can be enough to make you look up
\nat the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few
\nthat survived the rains and frost, shot
\nwith late afternoon sun. They glow a deep
\norange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird
\nwould rip it like silk. You may have to break
\nyour heart, but it isn\u2019t nothing
\nto know even one moment alive. The sound
\nof an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant
\nanimal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.
\nThe ruby neon of the liquor store sign.
\nWarm socks. You remember your mother,
\nher precision a ceremony, as she gathered
\nthe white cotton, slipped it over your toes,
\ndrew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath
\ncan uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,
\nthe big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything
\nyou dread, all you can\u2019t bear, dissolves
\nand, like a needle slipped into your vein \u2014
\nthat sudden rush of the world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Complement with Henry James on how to stop waiting and start living<\/a> and Hermann Hesse on how to be more alive<\/a>, then revisit Ellen\u2019s magnificent poem \u201cHow to Apologize.\u201d<\/a> And if you are looking to break your poetry open, I couldn\u2019t recommend her Living Room Craft Talks<\/a> more heartily.<\/p>\n

\n

donating = loving<\/h3>\n

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

\n

newsletter<\/h3>\n

The Marginalian<\/em> has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week\u2019s most inspiring reading. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a>. Like? Sign up.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou may have to break your heart, but it isn\u2019t nothing to know even one moment alive.\u201d The morning after a relationship of depth and significance long bending under the weight of its own complexity had finally broken with an exhausted thud, I opened the kiln to discover a month\u2019s worth of pottery shattered \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 22:03:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}