In Praise Of Four-Letter Words | By Ellen Bass | Issue 348 | The Sun Magazine
close

Search 45 years of archives

  • Popular Pages
  • Contact Us
  • Events
  • Quotations
  • Readers Write
  • Poetry
Independent, Reader-Supported Publishing
  • Sign In

  • Current issue
    May 2023 May 2023
    A woman in a tank top with many tattoos on her arms and upper back.
    Readers Write By Our Readers Tattoos

    A memorial, an act of rebellion, a reminder of survival
    The bottom part of a hinged metal box half full of metal letters of various sizes.
    The Sun Interview By Finn Cohen Speaking Of Tongues Justin E.H. Smith On The Mysteries Of Language
    In This Issue
  • archives
    • Featured Selections
    • Browse by year
    • Browse topics
    • Browse Sections
    April 2023 cover of The Sun. Close-up profile of a woman’s face. She is wearing a large hoop earring with LOVE in metal spanning the middle. She is watching a fraternity/sorority step show at Livingstone College, an HBCU in Salisbury, North Carolina.
    April 2023
    March 2023 cover of The Sun. At a baseball tournament in Kentucky, a serious-looking boy looks into the camera. He is wearing a baseball cap and T-shirt with “MAN” written in capital letters. The boy’s team is from Man, West Virginia.
    March 2023
    February 2023 cover of The Sun. A woman in Manhattan in the 1990s stands in front of a building looking down at the very large mobile phone she is holding. She is wearing a winter coat and has removed the glove from her right hand.
    February 2023
    January 2023 cover of The Sun. Close-up of the side of a man’s face as he looks at a woman who is looking intently at him and smiling with her mouth closed.
    January 2023
    December 2022 cover of The Sun. A girl wearing a dress with her arms out to her sides stands inside of a large plastic ball. The girl is a dark figure in the plastic ball with light shining through it. The photo was taken at a carnival in Minnesota.
    December 2022
    November 2022 cover of The Sun. Close-up of a dahlia against a dark background. The full, light-colored bloom faces the camera and fills the top half of the image, while the leafless stem travels down and off the page.
    November 2022
    Browse 45 years of archives
  • news & events
    • News & Notes
    • Events
  • Submit
    • Letter to the editor
    • Essays, Fiction, & Poetry
    • Readers Write
    • Interview Pitches
    • Photography
  • Donate
  • Search
  • Subscribe
    Personal. Political
    Provocative. Ad-free.

    Subscribe and Save up to 45%

    Subscribe

    Give the gift of the Sun

Independent,
Reader-Supported
Publishing
  • Current issue
  • archives arrow
    • Featured Selections
    • Browse by year
    • Browse topics
    • Browse Sections
  • news & events arrow
    • News & Notes
    • Events
  • Submit arrow
    • Letter to the editor
    • Essays, Fiction, & Poetry
    • Readers Write
    • Interview Pitches
    • Photography
  • Donate
  • Sign In
  • Subscribe

Personal. Political. Provocative. Ad-free.

Subscribe and Save up to 55%
Subscribe Now & Save Renew your subscription

Search 45 years of archives

  • Popular Pages
  • Contact Us
  • Events
  • Quotations
  • Readers Write
  • Poetry
An older woman in a long dress sits in the back corner of a sparsely furnished room while a man stands in the foreground wearing jeans and a plaid shirt with the sleeves folded up. He has a tattoo of a naked woman on his forearm.

© Chip Thomas
Poetry

In Praise Of Four-Letter Words

By Ellen Bass • December 2004
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Body and Mind
  • Culture and Society
  • Art and Creativity
  • Sexuality

Ellen Bass

More From This Contributor
  • Print
  • Print
  • Share
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
What Do You Think? We love getting letters to the editor for our Correspondence section.
Has something we published moved you? Fired you up? Did we miss the mark? Send A Letter

Also In This Issue

December 2004

December 2004 December 2004
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

On Terror

By Michelle Cacho-Negrete
Fiction

Dear Me

By Brian Buckbee
Sy Safransky's Notebook

December 2004

By Sy Safransky
The Sun Interview

Many Thanks

Gregg Krech On The Revolutionary Practice Of Gratitude

By Angela Winter

Related Selections

<em>from</em> The Grapes Of Wrath
The Dog-Eared Page

from The Grapes Of Wrath

By John Steinbeck
Fear Of Rest
The Dog-Eared Page

Fear Of Rest

By Wayne Muller
The Jump
Fiction

The Jump

By Wayne Harrison
Rose’s
Fiction

Rose’s

By Theresa Williams
More from the archives

Personal. Political. Provocative. Ad-free.

In each issue of The Sun you’ll find some of the most radically intimate and socially conscious writing being published today. In an age of media conglomerates, we’re something of an oddity: an ad-free, independent, reader-supported magazine.

  • About The Sun
  • Contact Us
  • Staff
  • facebookLike us
  • TwitterFollow Us
  • InstagramTake a look
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Sitemap

Copyright © 1974–2023 The Sun. All rights reserved.

close

Send to a Friend