Monthly Archives: January 2017

Can Poetry Stop This Man?

By Robin Bates | Published: January 22, 2017

Poetry may not have been able to stop Donald Trump, but it has its ways of mounting resistance. Poems by Tennyson, Auden, and Yeats explain how.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Donald Trump, In Memoriam, Joyce Carol Oates, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed

Empty but for Pain: How Faith Is Perverted

By Robin Bates | Published: January 21, 2017

During Inauguration activities on Friday, we saw two dramatically different versions of Christianity, with one pastor finding scriptural backing for Donald Trump’s wall and another presenting him with the Sermon on the Mount.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Donald Trump, Louise Erdrich, Presidential inauguration, Robert Jeffress, Tracks | Comments closed

How Will the Future Judge Us for Trump?

By Robin Bates | Published: January 20, 2017

Jane Hirshfield’s poem “What Will They Say” was reprinted by the National Academy of Poets to coincide with the inauguration of Donald Trump. Imagining what future generations will say of us, she urges them to understand us. Which is not to let us off lightly.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Let Them Not Say", Donald Trump, Jane Hirshfield | Comments closed

The Good Ol’ Boy That Conned America

By Robin Bates | Published: January 19, 2017

Flannery O’Connor “Good Country People” may help us understand why America got taken in by the man getting sworn in as president today: Donald Trump conned people whenever he caught them feeling superior to him.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged con men, Donald Trump, Flannery O'Connor, Good Country People | Comments closed

Jonathan Swift, Master of Fake News

By Robin Bates | Published: January 18, 2017

Fake news, which played a role in the 2016 election, may have become particularly sophisticated, but satirists have been creating fake news since at least the days of Jonathan Swift. Take, for instance, Swift’s “The Last Speech and Dying Words of Ebenezer Elliston,” which supposedly lowered the crime rate but which, for that reason, is problematic.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Donald Trump, fake news, Jonathan Swift, Last Speech and Dying Words of Ebenezer Elliston, Modest Proposal | Comments closed

Trump as Browning’s Pied Piper

By Robin Bates | Published: January 17, 2017

Charlie Pierce of “Esquire” makes good use of Robert Browning’s “Pied Piper of Hamelin” to describe Donald Trump’s con job. Then he imagines the tables turned and Trump as the deceitful major who stiffs his employee.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Pied Piper of Hamelin", 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump, Robert Browning | Comments closed

The President Who Loved Literature

By Robin Bates | Published: January 16, 2017

In a remarkable interview with “The New York Times,” Barack Obama spoke about the importance of literature in his life. The range of his reading and the sensitivity of his responses is astounding.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Barack Obama, Bend in the River, Colson Whitehead, Doris Lessing, Ernest Hemingway, Fates and Furies, Garcia Gabriel Marquez, Gilead, Gillian Flynn, Golden Notebook, Gone Girl, Jack Kerouac, Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz, Lauren Goff, Liu Cixin, Marilynne Robinson, Martha Nussbaum, Maxine Hong Kingston, Moveable Feast, Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Philip Roth, Road, Saul Bellow, Song of Solomon, Tempest, Three Body Problem, Toni Morrison, Underground Railroad, V.S. Naipaul, Warrior Woman, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

We Benefit When We Check Our Privilege

By Robin Bates | Published: January 15, 2017

Do be blind to one’s privileges is to live in a world of shadows and phantoms, as Ralph Ellison and Lucille Clifton both make clear. Life if much richer if we identify our blindnesses and engage with people as three-dimensional beings.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "wishes for sons", Invisible Man, Lucille Clifton, racism, Ralph Ellison, white privilege | Comments closed

Lift Every Voice and Sing

By Robin Bates | Published: January 14, 2017

Both Martin Luther King and James Weldon Johnson, in “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” drew strength and courage from the Book of Exodus.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Civil Rights Movement, Exodus, James Weldon Johnson, Lift Every Voice and Sing, Martin Luther King, slavery | Comments closed