Category Archives: Auden (W. H.)

Embattled Humanities Remain Vital

By Robin Bates | Published: August 9, 2018

The humanities at the moment are reeling but society’s need for them is as urgent as ever.

By Robin Bates | Published: December 17, 2017

In which I read Robert Frost’s “I Have Been Acquainted with the Night” as an Advent poem.

By Robin Bates | Published: August 24, 2017

As I sat by the hospital bed of a dear friend holding her hand, the well-known opening lines from Auden’s “Lullaby” came to mind:

By Robin Bates | Published: January 22, 2017

Poetry may not have been able to stop Donald Trump, but it has its ways of mounting resistance. Poems by Tennyson, Auden, and Yeats explain how.

By Robin Bates | Published: December 31, 2016

In Auden’s “Christmas Oratorio,” the shepherds stand in for the working class, who find love and personhood in the birth of Jesus.

By Robin Bates | Published: December 13, 2015

Obama in his Oval Office speech on terrorism said that “freedom is more powerful than fear.” Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor would beg to differ.

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Literature is as vital to our lives as food and shelter. Stories and poems help us work through the challenges we face, from everyday irritations to loneliness, heartache, and death. Literature is meant to mix it up with life. This website explores how it does so.

Please feel free to e-mail me [rrbates (at) smcm (dot) edu]. I would be honored to hear your thoughts and questions about literature.
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