NaPoWriMo Day 2: Ode to the Unsung

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Table of Contents

• Freewrite

• Poem: “Ode to Fat” by Ellen Bass

• Prompt

Freewrite

With this freewrite, as well as all freewrites, do not put any pressure on yourself to be good. You are simply getting thoughts on the page. You can write in poetry or in prose, but feel free to write poorly, sloppily, redundantly, and with cliches. Now is the time for ideas—we will eventually sculpt those ideas into art.

Think of something that many people find hideous or unlovable, but that you find a lot of beauty in.

Freewrite about that unloved thing for 8-10 minutes. What does it look like? What do other people not see? Give lots of visual description, or even tell the story of that thing. Try to shift the reader’s perspective.

Poem: “Ode to Fat” by Ellen Bass

Tonight, as you undress, I watch your wondrous

flesh that’s swelled again, the way a river swells

when the ice relents. Sweet relief

just to regard the sheaves of your hips,

your boundless breasts and marshy belly.

I adore the acreage

of your thighs and praise the promising

planets of your ass.

O, you were lean that terrifying year

you were unraveling, as though you were returning

to the slender scrap of a girl I fell in love with.

But your skin was vacant, a ripped sack,

sugar spilling out and your bones insistent.

O praise the loyalty of the body

that labors to rebuild its palatial realm.

Bless butter. Bless brie.

Sanctify schmaltz. And cream and cashews.

Stoke the furnace

of the stomach and load the vessels. Darling,

drench yourself in opulent oil,

the lamp of your body glowing. May you always

flourish enormous and sumptuous,

be marbled with fat, a great vault that

I can enter, the cathedral where I pray.

I love this poem’s worship of the fat body, a body typically castigated or shamed. The speaker’s love for her partner is evident in both the poem’s poetic leaps and vulgar interruptions. (I mean, “planets of your ass” is an incredible standalone line.) There’s a certain daring in this piece, a kind of chin-up defiance to anyone who disagrees with the speaker—born from a love that’s rich and tender.

Great poetry often shifts your perspective somehow, because poetry’s capacity for surprise and multiplicity allows the poet to manipulate language in more provocative ways. There are a lot of beautiful, natural comparisons the speaker makes of the subject’s body, such as:

• The body as a river swelling

• The marshy belly

• The “acreage” of thighs, the “planets” of ass

But then there’s an interruption in the natural imagery when the speaker mentions “that terrifying year / you were unraveling”—the body, for a moment, is a ripped sack, something unnatural and losing life. After this image, there's a shift from the natural to the regal: the praised body becomes palatial, opulent, marbled, then finally something holy, “the cathedral where I pray.”

So there are a lot of subtle shifts in this poem which relies on imagery and comparison to convey the fat body’s beauty. I adore this poem’s brief pivot towards praising not just fat, but fattening foods: “Bless butter. Bless brie. / Sanctify schmaltz. And cream and cashews.” (The consonance of Bs, Cs, and Ses is a nice touch.)

Through those shifts of imagery, there’s a praise of life itself, an adoration of the subject’s vitality. By the end of this poem, all the earthly concerns about fat—things like conventional beauty standards or the rather flawed BMI test—become footnotes to a body whose beauty glows, even to us readers, like a lamp.

Prompt

Write an ode poem to something disgusting, disturbing, unloved, or commonly uncelebrated. Invite the reader into this celebration.

If you’d like to see more examples of ode poetry, take a look at this craft article I wrote on the topic.