Aesop’s fable of the frog and the ox, versified by La Fontaine and Scott Bates, applies only too well to Donald Trump.
Monthly Archives: August 2020
Trump as Aesop’s Frog
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "F Is the Fable of the Frog and the Ox", "The Frog that Wished to Be as Big as an Ox", Aesop, Donald Trump, Jean de la Fontaine, Scott Bates Comments closed
Wanted: Teachers, Not Martyrs
Some say teachers should, like soldiers, should put their lives on the line. This A.E. Housman poem brings up the question of whether even soldiers should do so when there sacrifice will be meaningless.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Charge of the Light Brigade", "Here Dead We Lie", "I Have a Rendezvous with Death", "Soldier", "Strange Meeting", A. E. Housman, Alan Seeger, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Bertolt Brecht, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Galileo, Rupert Brooke, school reopening, teachers, Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien, Wilfred Owen Comments closed
Abandon the Shoes That Brought You Here
David Whyte and Lucille Clifton both have poems about Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee. For both it means stepping into uncharted paths.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Finisterre", "questions and answers", David Whyte, Jesus walking on water, Lucille Clifton, Transcendence Comments closed
Memo to Teachers: Put Lives on Line
Trumpian disrespect for school personnel–no special emphasis on safe reopening–brings to mind Kipling’s “Tommy.”
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Tommy", Betsy DeVos, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Rudyard Kipling, school reopening Comments closed
Pratchett Responds to Racist Politics
Terry Pratchett’s “Feet of Clay” argues humorously for diversity, immigration, and responsible governance.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Donald Trump, Feet of Clay, global institutions, Immigration, Pax Americana, racism, Terry Pratchett Comments closed
To Memorialize, Turn to Poetry
John Lewis’s mentor James Lawson read a Czeslaw Milosz poem at Lewis’s funeral, showing how deeply he understood social activism.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "I Dream a World", "Invictus", "Meaning", Czeslaw Milosz, funerals, Hamlet, James Lawson, John Lewis, Langston Hughes, Romeo and Juliet, William Ernest Henley, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Hang Together or Go Under
A James Baldwin prose poem alerts u to resources we have to resist the darkness that threatens us.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Nothing Is Fixed", complacency, Donald Trump, James Baldwin, Nothing Personal Comments closed
In the Desert Darkness One Has Found Me
Malcolm Guite’s sonnet on Jacob and the Angel mentions the love the simultaneously wounds and heals.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Parable and Paradox", Jacob and the angel, Malcolm Guite Comments closed
