Tag Archives: "Egrets"

Literature’s Unique Spiritual Insights

By Robin Bates | Published: February 15, 2020

An extended reflection upon the relationship between religion and literature.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Collar", "Egrets", "Flower", Brothers Karamazov, Flannery O'Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Herbert, Good Man Is Hard to Find, John Milton, King Lear, literature and religion, Mary Oliver, Paradise Lost, Religion, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Mary Oliver’s Christian Vision

By Robin Bates | Published: January 20, 2019

Spiritual Sunday It has become a tradition with this blog to share a Mary Oliver poem every Easter. Although the poet, who died this past Thursday, wasn’t overtly religious, many of her poems are dramas of grace intervening in a fallen world. She strikes me as the kind of Christian that Emily Dickinson was, finding […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Egrets", "Fawn", "How I Go to the Woods", Christianity, Mary Oliver | Comments closed

The Peace of Wild Things

By Robin Bates | Published: December 21, 2014

My Intro to Literature class explored how a disconnect from nature leads to existential anguish while opening themselves up to nature provides spiritual nourishment.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Ancient Mariner, "Egrets", "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "Killing the Trees", "Peace of Wild Things", All the Pretty Horses, Bacchae, Barbara Kingsolver, Ceremony, Cormac McCarthy, Euripides, Flight Behavior, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lucille Clifton, Mary Oliver, Midsummer Night's Dream, Nature, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, spiritual healing, Wendell Berry, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth | Comments closed

The Silver Water Crushes Like Silk

By Robin Bates | Published: April 22, 2012

Although not explicitly religious, Mary Oliver has a Good Friday-Resurrection progression in many of her poems, including “Morning at Great Pond.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Egrets", "Fawn", "Morning at Great Pond", "Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church", Emily Dickinson, Harold Bloom, Mary Oliver | Comments closed

Stepping over Every Dark Thing

By Robin Bates | Published: April 28, 2010

If life seems hard at the moment, I have a poem that may lift you up: Mary Oliver’s “Egrets.” Oliver is, if not the most popular poet writing in America today, at least among the top five. Her poems often function as prayers to a divine spirit running through nature. In this way, she comes […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Egrets", Mary Oliver, Nature | Comments closed