Tag Archives: PTSD

Halloween: “Purring in My Haunted Ear”

By Robin Bates | Published: October 31, 2024

For Halloween, here’s one of the scariest poems that I know. In it, Robert Graves recalls a childhood nightmare after he was wounded in World War I.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Child's Nightmare", Carl Jung, Halloween, Robert Graves | Comments closed

Silko and Trump on Weaving

By Robin Bates | Published: September 4, 2024

In response to Trump’s defense that his rambling is verbal weaving, I look at applicable weaving imagery in Silko’s novel “Ceremony.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Ceremony, dementia, Donald Trump, Election 2024, joy, Kamala Harris, Leslie Marmon Silko, stream-of-consciousness | Comments closed

Got a Problem? Call a Poet

By Robin Bates | Published: October 8, 2023

Tragedy, it turns out, is a powerful literary form for dealing with posttraumatic fear.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Aeschylus, Agamemnon, Angus Fletcher, Aristotle, bibliotherapy, catharsis, literary technique, Oedipus, philosophy, posttraumatic fear, Rhetoric, Sigmund Freud, sophists, Sophocles, Wonderworks | Comments closed

How Vonnegut Faced His Demons

By Robin Bates | Published: April 3, 2019

Thursday To honor the 50th anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, I am reposting an essay about how Vonnegut used science fiction to come to terms with the Battle of the Bulge and the Dresden bombing, both of which he experienced first-hand. I owe the ideas to student Chris Hammond, who devoted his senior project […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Battle of the Bulge, Cat's Cradle, Firebombing of Dresden, Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse Five, World War II | Comments closed

Lit for Survivors Lost in a Dark Wood

By Robin Bates | Published: January 28, 2018

Monday Commonweal recently published a heartfelt article by West Point visiting English professor Cassandra Nelson on how literature can help trauma survivors recover. Nelson begins with an angry comment about a University of Chicago dean’s facile dismissal of trigger warnings, even though she herself opposes them. She, however, speaks from the vantage point of one […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bluest Eye, Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Child Abuse, Dante, Inferno, Junot Diaz, Toni Morrison, trauma, trigger warnings | Comments closed

Solace for Vets from Sophocles

By Robin Bates | Published: September 13, 2016

A group has been giving dramatic readings of Sophocles plays in order to reach veterans suffering from PTSD. The results have been astonishing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Ajax, Philoctetes, Sophocles, Veterans, veterans' suicides, war | Comments closed

Vonnegut’s Sci Fi Says the Unsayable

By Robin Bates | Published: May 6, 2014

Yesterday I spent all day—from 9 am to 6 pm with occasional breaks—listening to our English majors present their senior projects. That I was energized rather than drained by the experience testifies to the strength of the talks. In today’s post I report on my student Chris Hammond’s essay on Kurt Vonnegut’s use of science […]