Monthly Archives: March 2014

The Call of the Steel Hoop

By Robin Bates | Published: March 22, 2014

Celebrate March Madness with this “transcendent moment in sports” poem.

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When the World Is Puddle Wonderful

By Robin Bates | Published: March 21, 2014

It was raining yesterday in Pittsburgh on the first day of spring, bringing to mind one of the great poems about the season.

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Why GOP Right Is Beating Up on the Poor

By Robin Bates | Published: March 20, 2014

Paul Ryan projects upon the poor as Joseph Conrad did upon Africans.

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Turn Life into a Great Jamesian Novel

By Robin Bates | Published: March 19, 2014

Philosopher Nancy Nussbaum, drawing on Henry James, shows how the creative imagination is also a moral imagination.

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The Centrality of Fiction to Our Lives

By Robin Bates | Published: March 18, 2014

Jonathan Gottschall’s “How Stories Make Us Human” is an enlightening book with some limitations.

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I Am of Ireland

By Robin Bates | Published: March 17, 2014

Yeats captures the enduring myth that is Ireland in two poems.

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Who Has Seen the Wind?

By Robin Bates | Published: March 16, 2014

Christina Rossetti’s “Who Has Seen the Wind?” is about the Holy Spirit.

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Rock-Paper-Scissors = Bad Relationship

By Robin Bates | Published: March 15, 2014

Barbara Goldowsky uses the game of rock-scissors-paper to convey a dysfunctional relationship.

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Literature as an Ethics Laboratory

By Robin Bates | Published: March 14, 2014

Literature helps us explore what it means to be an ethical being.

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