While many are celebrating the centenary of Ireland’s Easter uprising, Yeats’s famous poem on the rebellion offers us cautions about how to respond to such acts of rebellion today.
Tag Archives: Arab Spring
The Terrible Beauty of Political Fanatics
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Easter 1916", Easter uprising, Ireland, ISIS, Muslim Brotherhood, William Butler Yeats Comments closed
Hope and Disillusion in Egypt
Wordsworth’s “Prelude” captures both the hopes and disillusion that many have felt about the Egyptian revolution.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Prelude", Egypt, military coup, William Wordsworth Comments closed
Syria’s Massacre of the Innocents
Updating Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, Scott Bates imagines a soldier who takes a principled stand and refuses to participate.
The Perfection and Poetry of Tyrants
W. H. Auden’s chilling “Epitaph on a Tyrant” matter-of-factly shows the deadly but seductive simplicity that characterizes dictators like Qaddafi and Assad.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Bashar al-Assad, Dictators, Muammar Qaddafi, violence, W. H. Auden Comments closed
Shelley and Non-Violent Resistance
Blogger Austin Allen credits Shelley’s poem “Masque” with setting in motion the idea of non-violent resistance that we are currently seeing employed throughout the Arab world.
Refugees Dropped in a Fantastic Terrain
As I watch the brutal repression currently underway in Syria, I am reminded of Syrian-American poet Mohja Kahf’s poem about her family fleeing to America from Assad’s father in 1971.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Roc", Immigration, Mohja Kahf, politics, refugees, Syria Comments closed
