Monthly Archives: July 2017

Trapped in the Marriage Plot?

By Robin Bates | Published: July 10, 2017

Are even great novels like “Emma,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Jane Eyre,” and “Middlemarch” complicit with patriarchy? Some feminists argue that this is in fact the case.

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Once There Was Light

By Robin Bates | Published: July 9, 2017

I turned to Jane Kenyon’s “Having It Out with Melancholy” when a friend’s illness suddenly took a turn for the worse.

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Lit Frees Us from Our Mental Ghettos

By Robin Bates | Published: July 7, 2017

In a fine “New Yorker” article, Shakespearean Stephen Greenblatt argues that Shakespeare was incapable to showing anything less than the full humanity of his characters, even the villains. He thereby liberates us from our “mental ghettos.”

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Brecht Explains Castile Shooting

By Robin Bates | Published: July 6, 2017

To understand why cops continue to shoot innocent people of color and why juries acquit them, Brecht has the definitive explanation in his play “The Exception and the Rule.”

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Lucille Clifton’s Cancer Poems

By Robin Bates | Published: July 4, 2017

In her 1980s cancer poems, Lucille Clifton captures a range of feelings, ranging from confusion to anger to acceptance.

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Dear Trump: America Contains Multitudes

By Robin Bates | Published: July 4, 2017

To celebrate July 4, do not listen to Donald Trump, who preaches paranoia and exclusion. Read Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” His America contains multitudes.

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The Meadow-Scented Month July

By Robin Bates | Published: July 3, 2017

In this Boris Pasternak poem, July is compared to a unkempt and untidy summer lodger, who enters our house and interrupts our carefully regulated work routine.

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Born with a Knife in the Heart

By Robin Bates | Published: July 2, 2017

Israeli poet Haim Gouri reflects upon the story of Abraham and Isaac and concludes that the descendants of people persecuted “are born with a knife in their hearts.”

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