Monthly Archives: November 2020

Lear Also Doesn’t Step Down Gracefully

By Robin Bates | Published: November 9, 2020

We could have anticipated how Donald Trump would respond to losing by reading “King Lear.” All the stages are the same.

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Seamus Heaney’s Healing Vision

By Robin Bates | Published: November 8, 2020

Seamus Heaney’s “Cure at Troy” points toward a country’s possibility for healing, a powerful vision as America emerges from the Trump presidency and a contentious election.

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The Stars Weep with Happiness

By Robin Bates | Published: November 7, 2020

“There are no creatures you cannot love,” Tom Hennen writes in “From a Country Overlooked.” It is a message America currently needs.

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Our New President Understands Suffering

By Robin Bates | Published: November 7, 2020

America has elected a president who understands suffering. A passage from Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon” seems right.

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“Stalin’s Epigram” and the Trump Era

By Robin Bates | Published: November 5, 2020

Russian poet Osip Mandelstam describes life under Stalin. It eerily describes what life feels like under Trump.

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2020: Wandering between Two Worlds

By Robin Bates | Published: November 4, 2020

A witty riff on a T. S. Eliot line and an illusion to a Matthew Arnold poem neatly capture the 2020 election results.

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After the Storm

By Robin Bates | Published: November 3, 2020

Baylebridge’s “After the Storm” will hopefully provide a suitable metaphor for America following the 2020 election.

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Whitman: Ballots Like Snowflakes Falling

By Robin Bates | Published: November 2, 2020

Walt Whitman

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Hope for a Great Sea-Change

By Robin Bates | Published: November 1, 2020

The Seamus Heaney poem that Biden quotes in a new ad is itself taken from Heaney’s verse translation of Sophocles’s “Philoctetes.” It’s perfect for the current moment.

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