Tag Archives: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Classics to the Rescue in Dark Times

By Robin Bates | Published: May 29, 2025

In Trump’s first 100 days, Jill Lepore turned to 100 classics to survive.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "1914", "Fears in Solitude", "Nightingales Are Drunk", "Nose", "Story of the Bad Little Boy", "With Antecedents", Aesop, Antigone, classic literature, Dante, Eclogue II, Edith Wharton, Figure in the Carpet, Frogs Who Demanded a King, Grimm Brothers, Hafez, Henry James, Homer, Inferno, Jill Lepore, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Matsuo Basho, Modest Proposal, Nikolai Gogol, Odyssey, Reckoning, Six Servants, Sophocles, Virgil, Walt Whitman, Wilfred Owen, Yoshido Kenkō | Comments closed

Trump as Dracula and Ancient Mariner

By Robin Bates | Published: December 11, 2023

Maureen Dowd compares Trump to Dracula and the Ancient Mariner. The comparisons are worth exploring.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bram Stoker, Rime of the Ancient Mariner | Comments closed

Finding God in Silence

By Robin Bates | Published: September 23, 2023

Poet Jennifer Michael gave a talk on finding God through poetry, featuring Berry, Hirshfield, Oliver, and others.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Door", "I Go among the Trees", "Praying", "Silence", "Sometimes", "Whatever is Foreseen in Joy", Asphodel, Asphodel That Greeny Flower, Genesis, Jane Hirshfield, Jennifer Michael, Mary Oliver, Meditation, Wendell Berry, William Carlos Williams, William Wordsworth | Comments closed

Gods Speaks through the Imagination

By Robin Bates | Published: October 8, 2022

Jesus’s parables are exercises in imagining the kingdom of heaven come to earth.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Imagination, John Keats, John Milton, Parables, Paradise Lost, theology | Comments closed

Sickness Strikes Again

By Robin Bates | Published: July 6, 2022

I my recent bout with Covid, passages from “Heart of Darkness” and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” came to mind.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Heart of Darkness, Illness, Joseph Conrad, Rime of the Ancient Mariner | Comments closed

Wanted: Poets to Fight Climate Change

By Robin Bates | Published: December 29, 2021

To understand role poets can play in fighting climate change, go back to the Romantics and especially “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Barbara Kingsolver, climate change, extreme weather events, Margaret Atwood, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Wendell Berry, William Blake, William Wordsworth | Comments closed

Coleridge’s Nightmare LIFE-IN-DEATH

By Robin Bates | Published: October 28, 2021

Think of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as a Halloween poem.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Halloween, Rime of the Ancient Mariner | Comments closed

Aslan as Eco Warrior

By Robin Bates | Published: August 26, 2021

Lewis’s Aslan is a bold creative stroke that opens up environmental possibilities for Christianity.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged animal rights, C. S. Lewis, climate change, Environmentalism, Imagination, John Gatta, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Magician's Nephew, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, theology | Comments closed

Poets and Climate Change’s 5-Alarm Fire

By Robin Bates | Published: August 11, 2021

Literature has a role to play in the fight against climate change. Coleridge early on showed us how.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged climate change, ecocriticism, Nature, Rime of the Ancient Mariner | Comments closed