Monthly Archives: March 2021

March Madness Is Divinest Sense (Sort of)

By Robin Bates | Published: March 31, 2021

Having a March Madness bracket for poems provided excitement for kids and enlightenment for this teacher.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Gate A-4", "Hill We Climb", "Still I Rise", "Those Winter Sundays", "Two-Headed Calf", "World Is a Beautiful Place", Amanda Gorman, Laura Gilpin, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, March Madness, Maria Konnikova, Maya Angelou, Naomi Shihab Nye, Robert Hayden | Comments closed

Mothers with a Mind of Their Own

By Robin Bates | Published: March 30, 2021

Anyone with an elderly parents–and anyone with a three-year-old–will related to Milne’s “James James Morrison Morrison.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Disobedience", A. A. Milne, Aging, Mothers | Comments closed

Freed Like a Beached Whale

By Robin Bates | Published: March 29, 2021

Our spirits have curiously been lifted by the freeing of the Ever Given. Various whale poems come to mind.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Humpbacks", Ever Given, Mary Oliver, Scott Bates, shipping, Whales | Comments closed

Plague Lit on Life Returning to Normal

By Robin Bates | Published: March 28, 2021

Plague Lit teaches us how people behave DURING plagues. How about how they behave when life returns to normal? Camus may be best on this.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Albert Camus, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year, Last Man, Mary Shelley, plague | Comments closed

Choosing the Desert over Bondage

By Robin Bates | Published: March 27, 2021

Marge Piercy’s “Maggid” is a powerful Passover poem about the courage it takes to abandon what is familiar.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Maggid", Marge Piercy, Passover | Comments closed

Haaland and Silko’s Laguna Pueblo Vision

By Robin Bates | Published: March 25, 2021

The new Secretary of the Interior comes from the same tribe as novelist Leslie Marmon Silko and appears to hold the same view of the earth.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Ceremony, Deb Haaland, Environmentalism, Laguna Pueblo, Leslie Marmon Silko, Native Americans, public lands | Comments closed

A Stuck Ship, a Pound of Flesh

By Robin Bates | Published: March 24, 2021

The Evergreen cargo ship, stuck in the Suez canal, brings to mind a Shylock passage from “Merchant of Venice.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Evergreen, Merchant of Venice, predatory loans, shipping, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Why I Think the Way I Think

By Robin Bates | Published: March 23, 2021

I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Antonio Gramsci, Beowulf, Carl Jung, Carleton College, Hans Robert Jauss, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Literary Theory, Madame Bovary, Mark Twain, New Criticism, Norman Holland, Percy Bysshe Shelley, racism, Reader Response Theory, reception theory, Sigmund Freud, Terry Eagleton, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tobias Smollett | Comments closed

Victims of White Supremacist Exoticizing

By Robin Bates | Published: March 22, 2021

In “When I Was Growing Up,” Nellie Wong speaks to how American whites have long exoticized Asian-Americans.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "trying to be white", "way it was", "When I Was Growing Up", Asian-American identity, Lucille Clifton, Nellie Wong, racism | Comments closed

Monthly Archives: March 2021

March Madness Is Divinest Sense (Sort of)

Mothers with a Mind of Their Own

Freed Like a Beached Whale

Plague Lit on Life Returning to Normal

Choosing the Desert over Bondage

Haaland and Silko’s Laguna Pueblo Vision

A Stuck Ship, a Pound of Flesh

Why I Think the Way I Think

Victims of White Supremacist Exoticizing

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