Monthly Archives: July 2023

Are Stories a Trap? Not the Great Ones

By Robin Bates | Published: July 20, 2023

A recent New Yorker article critiques our reliance on stories but makes the mistake of not distinguishing between different kinds of stories.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Arabian Nights, Beowulf, Don Quixote, King Lear, Miguel de Cervantes, Peter Brooks, Seduced by Story, storytelling | Comments closed

Mixed Feelings about “On Raglan Road”

By Robin Bates | Published: July 19, 2023

Before having second thoughts, I once was in love with Kavanagh’s “On Raglan Road.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "On Raglan Road", "Sonnet 147", Dark Lady of the Sonnets, Hilda Moriarty, Patrick Kavanagh, Unrequited love, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

To Fight Authoritarianism, Think Sisyphus

By Robin Bates | Published: July 18, 2023

How to fight against authoritarianism? This of yourself as Camus’s Sisyphus.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Albert Camus, authoritarianism, Myth of Sisyphus, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Sisyphus | Comments closed

Before Vaccines: Home Burials

By Robin Bates | Published: July 17, 2023

Poems like Frost’s “Home Burial” can bring home the reality of a child’s death.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Home Burial", anti-vaxxers, child deaths, death and dying, Patrick Logan, Robert Frost, Tom Nichols, vaccines | Comments closed

Poets Talking Poetry over a Beer

By Robin Bates | Published: July 16, 2023

In this R.S. Thomas poem, two poets engage in the never-ending discussion of whether poetry is more craft or inspiration.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Circus Animals Desertion", "Poetry for Supper", Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ion, John Keats, Parliament of Fowls, Plato, R. S. Thomas, Squire's Tale, W. B. Yeats | Comments closed

Pullman and Dante on the Afterlife

By Robin Bates | Published: July 15, 2023

Pullman, drawing on Dante, provides one of the most sustaining accounts of the afterlife that I know.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Adonais", "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep", "Upon Nothing", "World", Afterlife, Amber Spyglass, death and dying, Fragment of Seneca Translated, Henry Vaughan, His Dark Materials, John Donne, John Wilmot, Mary Elizabeth Frye, Percy Shelley, Philip Pullman, Satyr on Reason and Mankind | Comments closed

History’s Arc Bends Towards Kafka

By Robin Bates | Published: July 13, 2023

The late Kundera has fascinating insights into how the novel has intersected with history.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Art of the Novel, authoritarianism, Castle, Don Quixote, Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Jane Austen, Madame Bovary, Miguel de Cervantes, Milan Kundera, sexuality, Slowness, Trial | Comments closed

Kundera Understood Authoritarianism

By Robin Bates | Published: July 12, 2023

The late Milan Kundera understood the authoritarian mindset in a deep way. “Book of Laughter and Forgetting” and “Eternal Lightness of Being” capture the mindset.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Aeschylus, Agamemnon, Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Donald Trump, Eternal Lightness of Being, Flies, Jean Paul Sartre, MAGA, Milan Kundera | Comments closed

Happiness Is Living in Inwardness

By Robin Bates | Published: July 11, 2023

May Sarton probes the nature of happiness in this peaceful poem.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Work of Happiness", happiness, May Sarton | Comments closed