Monthly Archives: July 2011

Refugees Dropped in a Fantastic Terrain

By Robin Bates | Published: July 13, 2011

As I watch the brutal repression currently underway in Syria, I am reminded of Syrian-American poet Mohja Kahf’s poem about her family fleeing to America from Assad’s father in 1971.

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Forgive Me for Eating Your Plums

By Robin Bates | Published: July 12, 2011

In my experience, no two people respond to William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just to Say” in the same way. More than most short poems, it seems to function as a Rorschach test, with reactions telling us more about the reader than the poem itself.

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Kiki Ostrenga as Sister Carrie

By Robin Bates | Published: July 11, 2011

Columnist David Brooks recently turned to Theodore Dreiser’s 1900 novel “Sister Carrie” in an attempt to make sense of the strange and disturbing case of 13-year-old internet celebrity Kiki Ostrenga.

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Jerusalem in a Green and Pleasant Land

By Robin Bates | Published: July 10, 2011

William Blake’s “Jerusalem” has been used for both religious and patriotic purposes. One must negotiate the relationship between religion and politics very closely since God can get bent to serve narrow agendas, and this poem is frequently misinterpreted.

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Spain’s Tiger Burning Less Bright

By Robin Bates | Published: July 9, 2011

Did the god that made the elegant strokes of Roger Federer also make the bruising style of Nadal? Like William Blake gazing at the lamb and the tiger in “Tyger, Tyger,” we can only shake our heads bemused.

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U.K. Tabloid Voicemail Scandal as Film Noir

By Robin Bates | Published: July 8, 2011

According to Jack Shafer of “Slate,” the U.K. tabloid phone hacking scandal has all the elements of a classic noir, especially “The Big Sleep” and “The Maltese Falcon.”

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Rightwing Rewrites Reality

By Robin Bates | Published: July 7, 2011

Today’s Republican right are practitioners of the Humpty Dumpty approach to communication: “I said it very loud and clear. I went and shouted in his ear.” Like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty, they also believe that they can make reality, as Humpty makes words, mean whatever they want it to mean.

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Rasselas, a Bloglodyte’s Salvation

By Robin Bates | Published: July 6, 2011

As a blogger, I sometimes spend excessive amounts of time in solitary contemplation. Samuel Johnson warns of the dangers of such a skewed perspective in his philosophic narrative “Rasselas.”

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Blueberry Muffins and Rites of Passage

By Robin Bates | Published: July 5, 2011

Writing about her mother’s blueberry muffins in her “Books that Cook” class, student Melanie Kokolios came to understand in a new way her own passage into adulthood.

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