Tag Archives: "Hollow Men"

Poetic Excuses for Losing at Tennis

By Robin Bates | Published: March 16, 2013

Between the motion and the act of my tennis game falls the shadow. Translation: too much thinking.

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A Time of Rare Beasts, Unique Adventures

By Robin Bates | Published: January 1, 2012

Spirit may seem less accessible after Christmas is over, Auden tells us, but that means we should focus all the more on seeking it out.

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The Presidential Candidates in Wonderland

By Robin Bates | Published: December 8, 2011

Should we dismiss all the rhetoric coming from the Republican presidential candidates as the gryphon in “Alice in Wonderland” dismisses the “off with their heads” commands of the Queen of Hearts?

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March Madness Ends with a Whimper

By Robin Bates | Published: April 9, 2011

“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” Eliot’s well-known conclusion to “The Hollow Men” (read the poem here) came to mind after watching the Butler Bulldogs lose to the Connecticut Huskies 53-41.The game was so bad that it takes a masterpiece of modernist despair to do it justice.

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George Steinbrenner, Not a Hollow Man

By Robin Bates | Published: July 17, 2010

Sports Saturday Mistah Steinbrenner—he dead. So I imagine T. S. Eliot announcing the death of the legendary Yankee owner this past week. That’s because, if one goes by Eliot’s famous 1925 poem “The Hollow Men,” one could not say that “the Boss” was “Shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion.” In fact, an […]

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