Category Archives: Uncategorized

Poets Talking Poetry over a Beer

By Robin Bates | Published: July 16, 2023

In this R.S. Thomas poem, two poets engage in the never-ending discussion of whether poetry is more craft or inspiration.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Circus Animals Desertion", "Poetry for Supper", Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ion, John Keats, Parliament of Fowls, Plato, R. S. Thomas, Squire's Tale, W. B. Yeats | Comments closed

Pullman and Dante on the Afterlife

By Robin Bates | Published: July 15, 2023

Pullman, drawing on Dante, provides one of the most sustaining accounts of the afterlife that I know.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Adonais", "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep", "Upon Nothing", "World", Afterlife, Amber Spyglass, death and dying, Fragment of Seneca Translated, Henry Vaughan, His Dark Materials, John Donne, John Wilmot, Mary Elizabeth Frye, Percy Shelley, Philip Pullman, Satyr on Reason and Mankind | Comments closed

History’s Arc Bends Towards Kafka

By Robin Bates | Published: July 13, 2023

The late Kundera has fascinating insights into how the novel has intersected with history.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Art of the Novel, authoritarianism, Castle, Don Quixote, Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Jane Austen, Madame Bovary, Miguel de Cervantes, Milan Kundera, sexuality, Slowness, Trial | Comments closed

Kundera Understood Authoritarianism

By Robin Bates | Published: July 12, 2023

The late Milan Kundera understood the authoritarian mindset in a deep way. “Book of Laughter and Forgetting” and “Eternal Lightness of Being” capture the mindset.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Aeschylus, Agamemnon, Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Donald Trump, Eternal Lightness of Being, Flies, Jean Paul Sartre, MAGA, Milan Kundera | Comments closed

Happiness Is Living in Inwardness

By Robin Bates | Published: July 11, 2023

May Sarton probes the nature of happiness in this peaceful poem.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Work of Happiness", happiness, May Sarton | Comments closed

Anti-Vaxxers Ignore the Past

By Robin Bates | Published: July 10, 2023

Anti-vaxxers should read 19th century novels, which describe high mortality rates

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "University Hospital Boston", anti-vaxxers, Birds' Christmas Carol, Bleak House, Charlotte Bronte, Childbirth, Cholera, Daniel Defoe, Jane Eyre, Journal of the Plague Year, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mary Oliver, Nemesis, Oliver Twist, Philip Roth, plague, Polio, Robert Kennedy Jr., Scarlet Fever, Secret Garden, Small Pox, Turberculosis, typhus | Comments closed

Soames: Sacrifice Mother, Not Baby

By Robin Bates | Published: July 9, 2023

Soames Forsyte, who sees his wife as property, would rather sacrifice his wife than abort his baby–suggesting that right to life may be more about right to property.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Abortion, abortion debate, Forsyte Saga, In Chancery, John Galsworthy, Late term abortions | Comments closed

MacDonald’s Loving Vision of Christ

By Robin Bates | Published: July 8, 2023

George MacDonald’s Christian vision comes through clearly in “Sir Gibbie,” a wondrous tale of a mute boy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged C.S. Lewis, Calvinism, Congregationalism, George MacDonald, Sir Gibbie, theology | Comments closed

It’s World Chocolate Day–Treat Yourself!

By Robin Bates | Published: July 6, 2023

Today being World Chocolate Day, I quote liberally from Joanne Harris’s novel “Chocolat.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Chocolat, chocolate, Easter, Joanne Harris, Lent, World Chocolate Day | Comments closed