Tag Archives: Alfred Lord Tennyson

Recovering from the Semester

By Robin Bates | Published: December 19, 2017

After an exhausting semester, I feel like Tennyson’s Arthur after his final battle. I’m spending my winter break with my wife and my mother in Sewanee, Tennessee, my version of Avalon.

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Federer, Unlike Ulysses, a Family Man Hero

By Robin Bates | Published: July 13, 2017

Time and again with Roger Federer, thinking he is nearing his end, I have cited Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” He keeps proving me wrong. One reason may be because he has a different relationship with his family than Tennyson’s protagonist has.

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Great Pro-War Literature Doesn’t Exist

By Robin Bates | Published: June 22, 2017

In which I argue that great pro-war literature doesn’t exist, including “The iliad” and “War and Peace.” (Both works are magnificent; I just don’t see them as pro-war.)

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Little Flower, If I Could Understand

By Robin Bates | Published: April 23, 2017

In celebration of Earth Day and as scientists protest anti-science measures in Washington, Tennyson’s “Flower in the Crannied Wall” is a good poem to revisit. Tennyson holds the tiny flower as a scientist might but then honors its immense complexity.

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The Soldier Knew Someone Had Blundered

By Robin Bates | Published: February 28, 2017

Donald Trump is refusing to take responsibility for the failed Yemen raid where a Navy Seal was killed, along with 30 civilians. The raid brings to mind the “Charge of the Light Brigade,” although more appropriate might be the Rudyard Kipling sequel, where the poet blasted England for failing to take care of the survivors.

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One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts

By Robin Bates | Published: January 30, 2017

Federer and Nadal resumed their legendary rivalry in the Australian Open finals and played a match for the ages. They are both old in tennis terms and by all rights should have been surpassed by the next generation. Therefore Tennyson’s “Ulysses” seems the proper poem to acknowledge them.

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Can Poetry Stop This Man?

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.

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Personal News: A 2018 Retirement

By Robin Bates | Published: January 5, 2017

In June 2018, after 38 years of teaching college, I will retire. I don’t want to go out like Walter Savage Landor’s old man–“the fire is low

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My Great Grandmother Read for Courage

By Robin Bates | Published: July 14, 2016

Reading over the memoirs of my great grandmother, I have been impressed by how reading literature helped her get through the hard times. The authors included Tennyson, George Eliot, Susan Warner, and Charlotte Yonge.

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