There’s no limit to the number of purposes to which poetry can be put, including a celebration of one’s favorite team. Here’s a piece of doggerel–which is to say, light comic verse–that I’ve written in honor of the Indianapolis Colts, who will be playing in the up-coming Super Bowl. I’ll annotate any obscure references […]
Monthly Archives: January 2010
Salinger and the Teenage Mindset
In my Introduction to Literature classes, I used to poll my students about the books they had read in high school that had impacted them. One book above all made it to the top of list after list: J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. I mention this because Salinger died yesterday at age 91. […]
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The Birds of War-Torn Afghanistan
I share today a poem by my father Scott Bates, who is an ardent birdwatcher as well as poet. The poem reminds us of an ongoing war that too often we want to push out of our minds. Through contrasting the natural world with the disasters created by humans, my father expresses his longing for […]
Mess with Dionysus and You’ll Pay
Euripides’ The Bacchae was written 2500 years ago. Given the shape our environment is in, the play is more urgent than ever. The story involves the nature god Dionysus, who visits Thebes followed by a troupe of dancing women, the Maenads or Bacchae. Dionysus is the product of a union between Zeus and Semele, a […]
Brett Favre and the Poetics of Failure
Brett Favre I watched in amazement this past Sunday as 40-year-old Brett Favre, despite being pounded by the defense of the New Orleans Saints in the National Football League’s National Conference championship game, pulled himself off the grass time and time again to keep on playing. It was an extraordinary chapter in a career that […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Bull", Aging, Brett Favre, Football, Ralph Hodgson, Sports Comments closed
Manning as Beowulf, No Joy in Mudville
A quick update for today’s post: some football fans are elated this morning, some are dejected. “There is no joy in Mudville,” the immortal line from “Casey at the Bat,” may come naturally to citizens of New York and Minnesota – an instance of poetry providing solace by naming our pain. Here’s the passage: Oh, […]
Schadenfreude and the NFL
Brady tackled by Raven Ray Lewis As I did in my last post on the National Football League playoffs, I am admitting to secret sentiments I’m not proud of. It’s not enough that the player and the team I am rooting for, Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, are winning. I have been reveling over […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "War Song of Dinas Vawr", Football, Indianapolis Colts, Sports, Thomas Love Peacock Comments closed
Donne as an Aid to Teenage Angst
Well, the semester is underway. Yesterday I began teaching one of my favorite classes, the early British Literature survey (Literature in History I). Along with Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Wife of Bath, Doctor Faustus, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and Paradise Lost, I will be teaching the poetry of John Donne. I […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Good Morrow, adolescence, John Donne, Margaret Edson, New Criticism, teaching, W;t Comments closed
Don’t Underestimate Students
I begin my two literature classes today and, as always, am filled with trepidation. Will I be the teacher my students need me to be? Margaret Edson’s play W;t reminds me that, if I stay true to the literature, all will be well. W;t, functions in part as a criticism of those college literature professors […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", John Donne, Margaret Edson, teaching, W;t Comments closed
