An Israeli war analyst says that the Iran war planners are blind to what could go wrong because they haven’t read their literature and history.
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Author Archives: Robin Bates
Iran War Planners Should Read Tolstoy
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Iran invasion, Leo Tolstoy, Macbeth, War and Peace, war technology, William Shakekspeare Leave a comment
Optimism in the Face of Trumpism
Optimistic about the future, feminist Solnit sees the right panicking over liberalism’s advances. Her Gramsci quote echoes Matthew Arnold and Virginia Woolf.
Palm Sunday and Two Donkey Poems
Two donkey poems to celebrate Palm Sunday, by G.K. Chesterton and Mary Oliver.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Donkey", “Poet Thinks about the Donkey", G.K. Chesterton, Mary Oliver, Palm Sunday Leave a comment
The Courage of a Tennessee Librarian
As a Tennessee library direct stands tall against a reactionary library board, I use Beowulf to reflect on the courage involved.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged banning books, Beowulf, libraries, Luanne James, Rutherford County Library Alliance Comments closed
An Optimist Revises Yeats’s “Second Coming”
Parodies of Yeats’s “Second Coming” and Williams’s “This Is Just to Say” provides us with a little midweek levity.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Second Coming", "This Is Just to Say", “Everything’s Fine :)", parody, William Carlos Williams Comments closed
The Goddess Nemesis at Work in Iran
The goddess Nemesis, mentioned in Hesiod’s Theogony and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is at work in Iran.
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Catch-22 and DJT’s Iran “Excursion”
Catch-22 understand perfectly Trump’s double dealing in the Iranian conflict.
Clifton: the dead shall rise again
Lucille Clifton celebrates Jesus’s Lazarus miracle by pointing to the resilience of the African diaspora.