Tag Archives: "Easter 1916"

Terrible Beauty Born from Easter 1916?

By Robin Bates | Published: April 21, 2023

Yeats’s “Easter, 1916” is a profound meditation on activism, including on the poet’s ambivalent feelings about Dublin’s Easter Rising.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", David Mamet, Easter uprising, Irish independence, Maud Gonne, Paul Muldoon, Terrorism, W. H. Auden, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed

The Theatricality of Martyrdom

By Robin Bates | Published: April 18, 2023

While visiting a Dublin exhibit of the Easter, 1916 Rising, I thought both of a Borges short story and Yeats’s famous poem about the event.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", Dublin, Easter Rising, Ireland, Irish independence, Jorge Luis Borges, Theme of the Hero and the Traitor, W. B. Yeats | Comments closed

Gun Violence and Armageddon

By Robin Bates | Published: May 31, 2022

Wednesday This past Sunday I shared a number of poems from Lucille Clifton’s Book of Days to reflect on how Christian nationalists, many of them wielding weapons of war, work against Jesus’s goal to bring the kingdom of God to Earth. One poem from the collection particularly stands out in the wake of the mass […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", "armageddon", Buffalo mass shooting, gun violence, Lucille Clifton, Uvalde mass shooting, violence, W. B. Yeats | Comments closed

The Terrible Beauty of Political Fanatics

By Robin Bates | Published: March 29, 2016

While many are celebrating the centenary of Ireland’s Easter uprising, Yeats’s famous poem on the rebellion offers us cautions about how to respond to such acts of rebellion today.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", Arab Spring, Easter uprising, Ireland, ISIS, Muslim Brotherhood, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed

If They Lose, Irish Can Turn to Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: January 5, 2013

Even if they lose the national championship game, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame have Ireland’s poetic legacy to fall back on.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", "Irish Airman Foresees His Death", Alabama Crimson Tide, Dubliners, Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, Football, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Modest Proposal, Sports, Ulysses, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed

Great Political Novels Not Agenda Driven

By Robin Bates | Published: September 27, 2012

Great political novels are rich in spiritual attitude. Poor ones are agenda driven.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", American Pastoral, Berger's Daughter, fathers and sons, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry James, Ivan Turgenev, Joseph Conrad, Literary Theory, Nadine Gordimer, Natalia Ginzburg, Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, political novel, snow, Stendahl, V.S. Naipaul, Vargas Llosa, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed

The Terrible Beauty of Political Fanatics

By Robin Bates | Published: September 18, 2012

In “Easter, 1916,” Yeats gives us a framework for understanding the ambivalence of Muslim moderates towards protesters.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", Islam, Muslim demonstrations, Political violence, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed