Monthly Archives: December 2020

Yeats, Not Heaney, for Dark Times

By Robin Bates | Published: December 10, 2020

For social and political barometers, try Heaney for optimism, Yeats for pessimism.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Cure of Troy", "The House of the Stare", Donald Trump, Election 2020, GOP, Joe Biden, Seamus Heaney, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed

Mountains Loom and I Won’t Stop Now

By Robin Bates | Published: December 9, 2020

Naomi Long Madget has just died at 97. Her poem “Midway” continues to inspire.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Midway", Black Lives Matter, Civil Rights Movement, Naomi Madgett Long | Comments closed

Lit for Understanding the Biden Voter

By Robin Bates | Published: December 8, 2020

To understand “the Joe Biden” voter, start with August Wilson’s “Fences.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "I Too Sing America", 2020 election, August Wilson, black voters, Donald Trump, fences, Joe Biden, Langston Hughes | Comments closed

A Wretch Concentered All in Self

By Robin Bates | Published: December 7, 2020

Look to Sir Walter Scott, not to Shakespeare, to sum up Donald Trump’s exit.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "My Native Land", 2020 election, Donald Trump, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Richard III, Sir Walter Scott, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Tolkien’s Key to Entering the Internet

By Robin Bates | Published: December 6, 2020

A Stanford computer science student writes in to apply a “Lord of the Rings” passage to a vexed internet question.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Internet, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Mines of Moria, youtube | Comments closed

A Mother’s Smile Prevails over Doubt

By Robin Bates | Published: December 5, 2020

e.e. cummings’s Christmas poem “from spiraling ecstatically this” disrupts normal patterns to reveal the elusive nature of the divine.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "from spiraling ecstatically this", Christmas, e. e. cummings, incarnation | Comments closed

Citizen Kane and Trump’s Psychology

By Robin Bates | Published: December 3, 2020

Scott Bates’s poem about Citizen Kane provides deep insight into autocrats like Donald Trump.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Citizen Cain", Citizen Kane, Donald Trump, immigrant child separations, Orson Welles, Scott Bates | Comments closed

Peeped Most Piteously for Pain of the Cold

By Robin Bates | Published: December 2, 2020

With our first snowfall, birds are swarming our feeders, bringing to mind a passage from “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and an Oliver Herford lyric.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "I Heard a Bird Sing", Birds, December, Oliver Herford, Pearl Poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain poet, Winter | Comments closed

In “Crown,” Philip Gets Auden, Not Keats

By Robin Bates | Published: December 1, 2020

“The Crown” makes productive use of poetry to move the action. In three Season #3 episodes, we encounter Kipling, Shakespeare, Keats & Auden.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Mandalay", "Moon Landing", British royal family, Crown, Endymion, John Keats, Richard II, Rudyard Kipling, W.H. Auden, William Shakespeare | Comments closed