Four poems for Mother’s Day.
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Author Archives: Robin Bates
At 75, She Accessed Her Inner Amazon
Entering her mid-seventies, my wife imagines herself as an Amazon warrior girding herself with velcro greaves and cuirasses.
It Was the Worst of Times: Gilded Age Redux
As the U.S. engineers a second Gilded Age and Trump fantasizes about ballrooms and monuments, it’s time to revisit Tale of Two Cities.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Charles Dickens, Donald Trump, Gilded Age, Tale of Two Cities, wealth inequality Leave a comment
Hope in Blooming Lilacs (Whitman)
For all the damage Trump & Co. are doing, Whitman, writing after the death of Lincoln, reminds us of American resilience.
Using Poetry to Stand Up to Tyranny
The poem that uses myth and literature to imagine the possibilities for action in the face of oppression.
Stand Here Awhile and Drink the Silence In
A Malcolm Guite meditation upon a quiet, rural church. “Stand here awhile and drink the silence in.”
Horizons Broadened
In this latest life installment, I share stories of the life-transforming impact that I’ve seen literature have upon my Slovenian students.
Seashells and Widow Jokes?!
Kimmel’s joke about Melania Trump, for which she is attacking him, has precedents in Chaucer, John Gay, and Wilde. Stephens’s poem “The Shell,” meanwhile, captures the travesty of the DoJ vs. Comey.