Tag Archives: climate change

How to Overlook 200,000 Deaths

By Robin Bates | Published: September 21, 2020

Donne’s “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” captures why America might be overlooking 200,000 deaths at the moment.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", Covid deaths, COVID-19, Donald Trump, John Donne | Comments closed

Apocalyptic Fire Ravages the Nation

By Robin Bates | Published: September 13, 2020

For literary equivalents of the west coast fires, look to “The Aeneid” and to Vasily Grossman’s “Life and Fate.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Aeneid, California wildfires, extreme weather, Life and Fate, Oregon wildfires, Vasily Grossman, Virgil | Comments closed

Without Nature, No Language for Soul

By Robin Bates | Published: August 29, 2020

In an age when we are exhausted by apocalyptic rhetoric, Richard Wilbur provides a poem that remind us of how much we owe to natural beauty.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Advice to a Prophet", Nature, Richard Wilbur | Comments closed

Read to Grapple with Climate Change

By Robin Bates | Published: July 27, 2020

Sian Cain uses literature to grapple with her decision, in light of climate change, not to have children.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Afterland, Amina Cain, Amitav Ghosh, Avni Doshi, Barbara Pym, burnt Sugar, childbearing, Children, Children of Men, cli-fi, climate fiction, Cormac McCarthy, Cygnet, D. H. Lawrence, David Wallace-Wells, Doris Lessing, Drowned World, Elena Ferrante, Fleishmann Is in Trouble, Future Home of the Living God, Indelicacy, J.G. Ballard, Jenny Offill, Lauren Beukes, Louise Erdrich, Lydia Millet, Margaret Atwood, Mark OConnell, Melissa Broder, Notes from an Apocalypse, Ottessa Moshfegh, Overstory, P.D. James, Pisces, Rachel Cusk, Richard Powers, Road Not Taken, Season Butler, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Uninhabitable Earth, weather, When It Happens, Year of Rest and Relaxation | Comments closed

To Fight Climate Change, Plant Gardens

By Robin Bates | Published: January 14, 2020

Wendell Berry asserts that growing and maintaining gardens is an antidote to climate change.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Speech to the Garden Club of America", gardens, Wendell Berry | Comments closed

The World Will End in Fire AND Ice

By Robin Bates | Published: January 2, 2020

When Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice,” it now appears (judging by Australia and Greenland) that everyone is right.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Fire and Ice", Australian wildfires, C. S. Lewis, Homer, Iliad, Last Battle, Robert Frost | Comments closed

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nativity

By Robin Bates | Published: December 21, 2019

This playful Scott Bates environmental poem looks at the nativity story and observes that we are in desperate need of a repetition.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Christmas, Environmental destruction, Scott Bates, syncretism | Comments closed

A Map to the Next World

By Robin Bates | Published: July 20, 2019

Spiritual Sunday The latest news on climate change continues to be horrific as we battle through the hottest summer on record. The heat wave is hitting countries all over the world, with France at one point posting temperatures of 114 degrees. In other words, we are witnessing human impact on the earth as never before. […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Map to the Next World", Joy Harjo, Native Americans | Comments closed

Winter’s Assyrian Invasion

By Robin Bates | Published: February 4, 2019

Monday When the polar vortex descended on the United States last week, the opening lines from Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib” came to mind. While I’d memorized the stanza in high school to learn anapestic meter (short-short-long), it captures the emotional force of extreme weather events. (Another Byron poem that does so is “Darkness”) […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Destruction of Senacherib", extreme weather events, Lord Byron, polar vortex | Comments closed