Ellen Bass's previous book of poetry, Mules of Love, was published by BOA Editions and won the 2002 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. In 1973, she co-edited the groundbreaking book No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women, and has since published six volumes of poetry. Her nonfiction books include I Never Told Anyone, Free Your Mind, and The Courage to Heal, which has sold over a million copies and been translated into twelve languages. Among her awards for poetry are the Elliston Book Award from the University of Cincinnati, the Pushcart Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod/Hardman, the Larry Levis Editors' Prize from Missouri Review, the New Letters Poetry Prize, the Greensboro Award in Poetry, the Chautauqua Poetry Prize, and a fellowship from the California Arts Council. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, where she has taught poetry and creative writing since 1974.

Books by Ellen Bass: The Human Line, Mules of Love, Of separateness & merging, Our Stunning Harvest, For earthly survival

Other poems on the web by Ellen Bass:
"The Aftermath"
"Pray for Peace"

Ellen Bass's Home Page.

About The Human Line:

"Ellen Bass's frighteningly personal poems about sex, love, birth, motherhood, and aging are kept from mere confession by the graces of wit, an observant eye, an empathetic heart, and just the right image deployed at just the right time. The Human Line is full of real stunners."
—Billy Collins

"Ever since her first book, I have admired the tough, urgent, and wildly human poems of Ellen Bass. The Human Line deepens my regard for her necessary and indelible voice."
—Thomas Lux

"There are some lovely poems in The Human Line, poems that live up to the splendid title, with all that it implies of our continuity in grief and joy. There are poems that cut deep into primal relationships and our sense of self."
—Carolyn Kizer

"Ellen Bass is such a trustworthy guide —awake to the certainty of death, to the irreconcilable losses, and to the daily imperfect reprieve of love. These are poems of quiet joy and true comfort."
—Marie Howe