Category Archives: Uncategorized

Children’s Lit in the Golden Age

By Robin Bates | Published: June 3, 2025

In “Children’s Book” Byatt explores why the Edwardian age was such a rich time for children’s lit.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Soldier", A. S. Byatt, Beatrix Potter, Benjamin Bunny, Children's Book, Children's lit, Defence of Poesy, E. Nesbit, Edwardian Age, James Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, Kim, Peter Pan, Peter Rabbit, Philip Sidney, Puck of Pook's Hill, Railway Children, Rudyard Kipling, Rupert Brooke, wind in the willows | Comments closed

Byatt and Childhood Memories

By Robin Bates | Published: June 2, 2025

A.S. Byatt’s Children’s Book has me revisiting my Edwardian upbringing and the books from that period that my father read to me.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments closed

Trumpists Edge Closer to 1984

By Robin Bates | Published: June 1, 2025

The Education secretary telling universities they should be in sync with the administration’s goals is further proof that it is following Big Brother’s playbook: Ignorance is strength.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1984, George Orwell, Linda McMahon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Comments closed

Mystic Harvest of the Fields of God

By Robin Bates | Published: May 31, 2025

A medieval Celtic Easter poem throbs with nature images.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Easter Song", Celtic Christianity, Easter, Sedulius Scottus, Victoria Emily Jones | Comments closed

Classics to the Rescue in Dark Times

By Robin Bates | Published: May 29, 2025

In Trump’s first 100 days, Jill Lepore turned to 100 classics to survive.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "1914", "Fears in Solitude", "Nightingales Are Drunk", "Nose", "Story of the Bad Little Boy", "With Antecedents", Aesop, Antigone, classic literature, Dante, Eclogue II, Edith Wharton, Figure in the Carpet, Frogs Who Demanded a King, Grimm Brothers, Hafez, Henry James, Homer, Inferno, Jill Lepore, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Matsuo Basho, Modest Proposal, Nikolai Gogol, Odyssey, Reckoning, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Six Servants, Sophocles, Virgil, Walt Whitman, Wilfred Owen, Yoshido Kenkō | Comments closed

MAGA’s “Get Out of Sin Free” Pass

By Robin Bates | Published: May 28, 2025

Browning poem on the antinomian thinker Johannes Agricola helps us understand some of Trump’s Christian followers.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Johannes Agricola in Meditation", antinomianism, Christian nationalism, Donald Trump, Robert Browning, Trump's Christian supporters | Comments closed

Understanding Murikami’s 1Q84

By Robin Bates | Published: May 27, 2025

In which I explore the theme of toxic masculinity in Murakami’s “1Q84.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Dover Beach", 1Q84, Carl Jung, Haruki Murakami, Matthew Arnold, return of the repressed, Sigmund Freud, toxic masculinity, Trumpism | Comments closed

Irony and the GOP’s Big Beautiful Bill

By Robin Bates | Published: May 26, 2025

The GOP’s “big beautiful bill” is perfect in its rottenness–like William Carlos Williams’ rotten apple in “Perfection.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Hellas: A Chorus", "Ode to the West Wind", "Shine Perishing Republica", American decadence, Big Beautiful Bill, GOP, Percy Shelley, Perfection, Robinson Jeffers, William Carlos Williams | Comments closed

On Those Who Fail to Honor the Fallen

By Robin Bates | Published: May 25, 2025

In bitter satire, Siegfried Sassoon lashes those who cheer marching soldiers but ignore war’s victims. Imagine what he would have thought of Donald Trump.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Suicide in the Trenches", Donald Trump, Memorial Day, Siegfried Sassoon | Comments closed