Monthly Archives: October 2018

Plumbing Nightmares

By Robin Bates | Published: October 10, 2018

Wednesday My last two days have been mired in a plumbing morass, during which time I have bonded with my plumber and his family. I found a poem by one Tony Gruenewald that gets at some of what I’ve been feeling. Here’s our situation. My mother has been taking her water from the lake by […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Yes, GOP Is Atticus, but Not in a Good Way

By Robin Bates | Published: October 9, 2018

John Cornyn compared the GOP to Atticus Finch? The comparison holds if he has in mind the Atticus of “Go Tell a Watchman.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Atwood’s Circe vs. Brett Kavanaugh

By Robin Bates | Published: October 8, 2018

Monday The contrast between an accommodating Christine Blasey Ford and an exploding Brett Kavanaugh is indelibly printed on my mind and may be the major thing I take away from the hearings. That white privileged men can use anger to assert dominance while women and people of color must speak in measured tones has become […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

God Loves As If There Were Only One

By Robin Bates | Published: October 6, 2018

Martha Serpas’s “As If There Were Only One” sounds as though the speaker is emerging from a deep depression and learning to love again.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Zamiatin Anticipated Trump Cultism

By Robin Bates | Published: October 5, 2018

Friday Having just reread Eugene Zamiatin’s dystopian novel We (1920) for the first time since encountering it in 1972 in a junior-level utopian literature class, I’m struck by how it captures the cult behavior of Donald Trump fans. The novel even features a protective wall. Although Zamiatin supported the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, by 1920 he […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments closed

The Snow Queen & Child Snatching

By Robin Bates | Published: October 4, 2018

Andersen’s “Snow Queen” tells of a child abduction that is only too relevant as children are separated from their immigrant parents.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Why Poetry When Tsunamis Strike

By Robin Bates | Published: October 3, 2018

Poetry seems inadequate to deal with large scale natural disasters but we turn to it anyway.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Remembering a Favorite English Teacher

By Robin Bates | Published: October 2, 2018

My favorite English teacher just died after years of Alzheimer’s. I share the epitaph from Gray’s “Country Churchyard,” which he introduced me to.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Camilla, the Woman Who Fights Back

By Robin Bates | Published: October 1, 2018

Camilla is a woman who fights back against Aeneas. It prove to be all in vain, which may be the case of those opposing rightwing justices on the Supreme Court.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments closed