Tag Archives: polar vortex

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”) […]

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Lessons from Being Cold & Depressed

By Robin Bates | Published: January 31, 2019

Thursday The polar vortex that is freezing America’s northern states gives me an excuse to rerun a post I wrote on Mary Oliver’s “Cold Poem.” If you want a silver lining for extreme cold, Oliver has one. Reprinted from January 8, 2014 Much of the United States is caught in extremely cold temperatures at the […]

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