Monthly Archives: August 2020

Trump as Aesop’s Frog

By Robin Bates | Published: August 10, 2020

Aesop’s fable of the frog and the ox, versified by La Fontaine and Scott Bates, applies only too well to Donald Trump.

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

By Robin Bates | Published: August 8, 2020

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

By Robin Bates | Published: August 7, 2020

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

By Robin Bates | Published: August 6, 2020

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

Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun

By Robin Bates | Published: August 4, 2020

I lost a dear friend two days ago, one who was practically family. I turn to Shakespeare’s “Fear no more the heat of the sun” for solace.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Fear no more the heat of the sun", Cymbeline, death and dying, William Boyd, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Pratchett Responds to Racist Politics

By Robin Bates | Published: August 4, 2020

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

By Robin Bates | Published: August 3, 2020

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

By Robin Bates | Published: August 3, 2020

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

By Robin Bates | Published: August 1, 2020

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