Tag Archives: cancer

Can We Imagine Another’s Pain?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 5, 2009

In Friday’s post I mentioned how we read and discussed the first few pages of Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World in our most recent salon, held to support colleague Alan Paskow as he battles with cancer.  Scarry claims that language is inadequate when it comes to physical pain so […]

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Alan’s Cancer vs. an Exquisite Corpse

By Robin Bates | Published: August 20, 2009

Colleagues of my friend Alan Paskow held another one of our salons Monday night.  Alan is a former professor of philosophy at St. Mary’s College, now retired, who currently has cancer in his lungs.  We have been meeting once a month or so to show our support and to generally reaffirm how important community is.  Monday […]

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Death and Language’s Limitations

By Robin Bates | Published: May 22, 2009

In spending the last two weeks discussing how poetry can come to our aid in a season of death, I have been exploring how poetry responds to its greatest test. Death and dying can trigger our deepest fears, generate panic, denial and anger, prompt us to question everything we believe in, and send on frantic […]

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Sir Gawain and a Friend’s Cancer

By Robin Bates | Published: May 15, 2009

Just as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight supported me as I grieved for my son, so is it supporting me now as I interact with a close friend, a philosophy professor, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Alan’s tumors began in his neck and eyelid and have now migrated down to his lungs. […]

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