Category Archives: Uncategorized

On Losing One of the Musketeers

By Robin Bates | Published: February 9, 2025

When I was growing up as one of four boys, we thought of ourselves as Dumas’s musketeers. We have now lost one of our number.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alexander Dumas, brotherhood, death and dying, Man in the Iron Mask, Three Musketeers | Comments closed

Jesus, Fishing, and Everlasting Life

By Robin Bates | Published: February 8, 2025

Mary Oliver makes a Eucharistic feast out of a fish she has caught, bringing to mind Jesus’s injunction to become “a fisher of people.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "And Death Shall Have No Dominion", "Do Not Go Gentle", "Fish", death and dying, Dylan Thomas, eucharist, life after death, Mary Oliver | Comments closed

A Woman 600 Years Ahead of Her Time

By Robin Bates | Published: February 7, 2025

If Chaucer’s created a timeless and transcendent character in the Wife of Bath, it is because he listened–really listened–to women.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Beowulf, Christian misogyny, Defence of Poetry, Feminism, Geoffrey Chaucer, Harold Bloom, Percy Shelley, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Wife of Bath, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Good Night, Dear Heart

By Robin Bates | Published: February 5, 2025

My brother died yesterday. This Mark Twain lyric gets at some of what I’m feeling.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged death, Mark Twain | Comments closed

Trump Doth Murder Sleep

By Robin Bates | Published: February 4, 2025

Trump and Musk are current-day Macbeths, out to murder American democracy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Macbeth, Trump's coup, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Unknown Citizens vs. Musk-Trump

By Robin Bates | Published: February 3, 2025

While Auden satirizes the “Unknown Citizen,” unknown citizens are currently stepping up to resist Trump and Musk’s attempted coup.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Unknown Citizen", Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Jay Kuo, surveillance state, Trump's coup, W. H. Auden | Comments closed

Responding to the Musk-Trump Coup

By Robin Bates | Published: February 2, 2025

In response to attempted takeovers such as Elon Musk’s, poet Ilya Kaminsky urges us to wake up and resist. Anne Lamott suggests some of the forms this can take.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "We Lived Happily During the War", Anne Lamott, Elon Musk, Fascism, Ilya Kaminsky, resistance, Ruth Ben-Ghiat | Comments closed

Prayer Is Waiting with Desire

By Robin Bates | Published: February 1, 2025

Richard Bauckman’s poem about Simeon defines prayer as “waiting with desire.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Wait and See (Semeon and Anna)", Awaiting the messiah, Richard Bauckman, Simeon | Comments closed

Fighting the Erasure of History

By Robin Bates | Published: January 30, 2025

Black history month is more essential these days than it has been for a while given Trump’s desire to erase it. Black writers are important in keeping it alive.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "i am accused of tending to the past", "Life Every Voice and Sing", 1984, Black History Month, DEI, Donald Trump, George Orwell, James Weldon Johnson, Lucille Clifton, racism | Comments closed