Tag Archives: "Collar"

Methought I Heard One Calling, “Child”

By Robin Bates | Published: June 18, 2022

For Father’s Day, here are a couple of God the father poems.

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Literature’s Unique Spiritual Insights

By Robin Bates | Published: February 15, 2020

An extended reflection upon the relationship between religion and literature.

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At Easter, God Pushes through Doubt

By Robin Bates | Published: April 20, 2019

Easter Sunday Sue Schmidt, occasional contributor to this blog and one of the most spiritual people I know, alerted me to this Jeanne Murray Walker poem about wrestling with doubt. Although it’s not explicitly an Easter poem, it describes God blazing up when everything seems empty—as God did on that Resurrection Sunday two millennia ago. […]

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When God’s Call Feels Like a Burden

By Robin Bates | Published: July 3, 2011

“Collar” works as a triple pun—a clerical collar, a prisoner’s collar, and “choler.” Why, for all that I have done, am I only harvesting a thorn, George Herbert cries out in the poem by that name. Why am I still standing in suit to God when I could simply turn my back on it all?

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Yes, Stanley, Lit Can Change Lives

By Robin Bates | Published: October 14, 2009

  George Herbert I’m trying to figure out why Stanley Fish bothers me so.  Maybe it’s because I’m already worried that our society doesn’t take poetry seriously enough.  Then an English professor with a national forum comes along and confirms that people should consider the study of literature as an arcane study yielding satisfactions only to […]

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