Tag Archives: T. S. Eliot

A Light on the Darkling Road

By Robin Bates | Published: January 2, 2021

George McKay Brown’s “Calendar of Kings” captures the gift of God in the world by dwelling on small moments.

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2020: Wandering between Two Worlds

By Robin Bates | Published: November 4, 2020

A witty riff on a T. S. Eliot line and an illusion to a Matthew Arnold poem neatly capture the 2020 election results.

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Children’s Natural Affinity for Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: August 23, 2020

I describe here the remote poetry instruction I have been conducting with my 8-year-old grandson for the past four months.

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Trump as Low-Rent Lear

By Robin Bates | Published: June 10, 2020

I agree with George Will that Trump is like the narcissistic King Lear and his GOP enablers like T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men

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Valley of Dry Bounds, a Waste Land

By Robin Bates | Published: March 28, 2020

Spiritual Sunday As we are in the Lenten season, the liturgy has of reading one of the strangest passages in the Bible, that being Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones. I repost today an essay from April 6, 2016 on  T. S. Eliot’s allusion to the imagery. Given how desolate many of us are feeling these […]

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The Thick Honey of This Good Life

By Robin Bates | Published: November 9, 2019

Jane Hirshfield’s “Bees” explores how we find deep meaning in our lives–and why we sometimes opt for routine instead.

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The Anxiety of Harold Bloom

By Robin Bates | Published: October 14, 2019

The late Harold Bloom longed to be a Samuel Johnson but never got there.

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T. S. Eliot on Resisting Tyrants

By Robin Bates | Published: September 26, 2019

Columnist Gerson invokes “Murder in the Cathedral” to predict the impeachment of Donald Trump.

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Come, Holy Spirit

By Robin Bates | Published: June 8, 2019

Pentecost Sunday Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz uses the occasion of Pentecost to explore the nature of faith in his poem “Veni Creator.” Although the apostles may have been filled with the Holy Spirit, what about those of us who don’t experience tongues of flame? Here’s Luke’s description of moment (Acts 2:1-4): When the […]

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