Monthly Archives: June 2011

Pentecost Flames, Fireflies’ Crooked Street

By Robin Bates | Published: June 12, 2011

Walcott turns to his Caribbean childhood, spent in Santa Lucia and Trinidad, to find God. It is as though his mind must travel there because he is having trouble hearing God in the cities, with their cold streetlamps lining the regulated sidewalks.

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I Must Down to the Seas Again

By Robin Bates | Published: June 11, 2011

I can imagine my student sailor liking John Masefield’s “Sea Fever.” She knows what it’s like to give oneself over to “the gull’s way and the whale’s way” and how the wind can feel like a whetted knife.

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An Inhumane Immigration System

By Robin Bates | Published: June 10, 2011

A Hollywood ending to “The Visitor” would shield the viewer from a tragedy that is re-enacted hundreds of times daily in detention centers around this country. Instead, we are given the stark reality.

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Obama, Unconventional Epic Hero

By Robin Bates | Published: June 9, 2011

Maybe Obama is like Beowulf, who watches out Grendel operates and allows the monster to strike first before responding. Then he reaches out with a firm grip. Bombast and theatrics are for others. His aim is to save the hall.

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Poetry to Read at a Hippy Wedding

By Robin Bates | Published: June 8, 2011

Today is my wedding anniversary so you get to hear how I wove poetry into the ceremony. W. B. Yeats, Archibald MacLeish, D.H. Lawrence, and the Song of Solomon all made appearances. Get ready for time travel back to a very different era.

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Family, Secrets, and Food

By Robin Bates | Published: June 7, 2011

The focus on secrets in novels like Secrets of the Tsil Cafe and Fried Green Tomatoes led St. Mary’s student Nona Landis to look at the way that “secrets played out in my own family, especially with regard to recipes and dishes.” The following article is about her father’s “Seafood Bisque” and how it is “intimately but mysteriously connected to my family and to me.”

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Reading Whitman: My 15 Minutes of Fame

By Robin Bates | Published: June 6, 2011

My 15 minutes of fame came when I read Walt Whitman’s “Oh Captain, My Captain” to the people of Slovenia. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. As today is D-Day, it seems a good time to tell the story.

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This Is the Golden Morning of Love

By Robin Bates | Published: June 5, 2011

A wedding poem seems appropriate for June. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s lovely “Marriage Morning” draws me, maybe because it captures some of the anxieties of the wedding day and not just the joys.

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Should Canadians Root for the Canucks?

By Robin Bates | Published: June 4, 2011

One would think Canadians would be rooting for Vancouver over Boston in this year’s NHL finals. But as Canadian author Michael McKinley sees it, “Vancouver isn’t really Canada because you can’t skate outside.” By this rationale, Boston is more Canadian than Vancouver.

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