Tag Archives: T. S. Eliot

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

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Hollow Men", Donald Trump, George Will, GOP, King Lear, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

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 […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Ezekiel, valley of the dry bones, Waste Land | Comments closed

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Hollow Men", bees, Jane Hirshfield | Comments closed

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom, Samuel Johnson | Comments closed

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Donald Trump, Murder in the Cathedral, Nancy Pelosi, Trump impeachment, Trump Ukraine Scandal | Comments closed

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 […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Gerontion", "Venite Creator", Brothers Karamazov, Czeslaw Milosz, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Grand Inquisitor, love, Pentecost | Comments closed

Lent: The Air Heavy and Thick

By Robin Bates | Published: March 9, 2019

Spiritual Sunday I share today a good Lenten poem by Denise Levertov where the poet finds herself in a funk, albeit not a dramatic funk. She’s experiencing neither a “dark night of the soul” nor a scorching wasteland desert, those extreme moments of crisis that have pushed people to revelation. (Today’s Gospel reading is Jesus’s […]