Monthly Archives: September 2023

No One Understood the Final Meal

By Robin Bates | Published: September 30, 2023

In this poem, Mark Jarman shows how the Last Supper was just like any other meal–until it wasn’t.

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ChatGPT, Infernal Machine

By Robin Bates | Published: September 28, 2023

ChatGPT is taking plagiarism to new levels. Shel Silverstein’s humorous poem mocks such machines but underestimates them.

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America’s Political Violence Problem

By Robin Bates | Published: September 27, 2023

Some see Trump as a “stochastic terrorism,” inciting others to violence. Cormac McCarthy may understand as well as anyone what’s going on.

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Why Belief in Phony Conspiracies?

By Robin Bates | Published: September 26, 2023

Why do people believe in wild conspiracies. I look into some theories.

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More Entries for the Cli-Fi List

By Robin Bates | Published: September 25, 2023

Powers’s “Overstory” and Doerr’s “Cloud Cuckoo Land” can be added to the growing list of cli-fi.

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Final (?) Toby Literary Tweets

By Robin Bates | Published: September 24, 2023

Comc literary tweets from Tobias Wilson-Bates

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Finding God in Silence

By Robin Bates | Published: September 23, 2023

Poet Jennifer Michael gave a talk on finding God through poetry, featuring Berry, Hirshfield, Oliver, and others.

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A GOP Version of Chekhov’s Gun

By Robin Bates | Published: September 21, 2023

A pundit invokes Chekhov’s gun in covering the GOP impasse that may shut down the government.

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Life Lessons from Russian Masters

By Robin Bates | Published: September 20, 2023

Acc. to George Saunders, much of what we need to know about life can be learned from Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol.

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