Monthly Archives: January 2016

LeGuin Attacks Federal Land Seizure

By Robin Bates | Published: January 20, 2016

Sci-fi writer Ursula K. LeGuin recently wrote to the Oregonian complaining that it fails to understand that “federal” land means all our land. It’s a vision she also communicates in her utopian classic “The Dispossessed.”

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Has America Become a Lion for Peace?

By Robin Bates | Published: January 19, 2016

From having destabilized the world with the invasion of Iraq, America is becoming a force for peace with the Iranian peace accord. The turnaround reminds me of the evangelical lion in one of Scott Bates’s animal fables.

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Beware Teachers That Satirize Students

By Robin Bates | Published: January 18, 2016

Tom Layman’s “The Students” is a humorous poem but, in the end, mean-spirited. It also lets the teacher off the hook.

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Black in a White World

By Robin Bates | Published: January 17, 2016

Clint Smith’s poem captures what it can feel like to be the only black student in an otherwise all-white class.

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Mary’s Dangerous Request at Cana

By Robin Bates | Published: January 16, 2016

In his poem about the wedding at Cana, Rilke sees Mary as a proud mother who inadvertently pushes her son towards his destiny by asking him to perform a miracle. On reflection, she realizes what she did.

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Ted Cruz–Dark and Satanic?

By Robin Bates | Published: January 14, 2016

When NYT columnist David Brooks called Ted Cruz “dark and satanic,” he was referencing a Blake poem. But although the allusion is apt, it struck most people as weird or offensive because they didn’t recognize the source.

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Becoming the Land’s People Is Hard

By Robin Bates | Published: January 13, 2016

Barack Obama in his 2016 State of the Union Address talked about the difficult task of creating an America that upholds our highest values. Robert Frost talks of the challenge in his poem “The Gift Outright.”

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British and American Fantasy Contrasted

By Robin Bates | Published: January 12, 2016

An “Atlantic” article argues that British fantasy is richer than American fantasy. I agree that they are different and that there are interesting reasons for those differences–but that American fantasy is vibrant as well.

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The Singular “They” Is Here to Stay

By Robin Bates | Published: January 11, 2016

The singular “they” is on the verge of becoming accepted in formal writing. It’s a development I approve of (if language never changed, I should have said “of which I approve”), and to celebrate I share a Philip Levine poem that makes imaginative use of the word “they.”

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