Monthly Archives: June 2021

Hydrocarbons Are Our Dark Satanic Mills

By Robin Bates | Published: June 30, 2021

Blake’s “Jerusalem” can be read as a challenge to oppose the forces of climate change that threaten our beautiful country.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Jerusalem", climate change, Environment, heat wave, William Blake | Comments closed

Looking Forward, Not Back

By Robin Bates | Published: June 29, 2021

Seeking to resurrect Troy, Aeneas takes on a challenge also facing America.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Hellas", Alfred Lord Tennyson, declining empires, Donald Trump, Make America Great Again, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ulysses | Comments closed

Bringing Back the Games of Yesteryear

By Robin Bates | Published: June 28, 2021

My grandson is visiting, getting me to break out the old games my father loved.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Ballad of the Games of Yesteryear", "Ballad of the Ladies of Bygone Times", Children, children's games, Francois Villon, Scott Bates | Comments closed

Coping with Pain

By Robin Bates | Published: June 27, 2021

My mother fractured her pelvis this past week. This poem about pain helps me empathize.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged David Budbill, Pain, sickness | Comments closed

David and Jonathan’s Love

By Robin Bates | Published: June 26, 2021

Abraham Cowley has a poem about David and Jonathan that leaves me with mixed feelings. Their friendship was purer, he contends, than sexual relationships.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "David and Jonathan", Abraham Cowley, David and Jonathan, homosexuality, homosocial relations | Comments closed

Holmes and Lupin, a Comparison

By Robin Bates | Published: June 24, 2021

Netflix’s Lupin is based on Leblanc’s “gentleman burglar series,” which itself owes much to Sherlock Holmes.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Arthur Conan Doyle, detective fiction, Lupin, Maurice Leblanc, Scandal in Bohemia, Study in Scarlet | Comments closed

Eternally Damned after Reading a Book

By Robin Bates | Published: June 23, 2021

In which I compare Austen’s Marianne and Willoughby to Dante’s Paulo and Francesca.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Castaway", "Task", Alexander Pope, Dante, Desire, Essay on Man, Inferno, James Thomson, Jane Austen, Relationships, Seasons, Sense and Sensibility, Sir Walter Scott, William Cowper | Comments closed

Lit Steels Spines in Face of Pressure

By Robin Bates | Published: June 22, 2021

One answer to how Austen’s Fanny Price resists the unrelenting family pressure to marry Crawford: she has read Richardson’s “Clarissa.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Clarissa, Family, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Marriage, Samuel Richardson | Comments closed

Putin Quoting Tolstoy? Puleeze!

By Robin Bates | Published: June 21, 2021

Putin claimed to quote Tolstoy but didn’t in his meeting with Biden. What he says is reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit, however.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Flannery O'Connor, Good Man Is Hard to Find, Joe Biden, Leo Tolstoy, Soul, Vladimir Putin, War and Peace | Comments closed