While visiting a Dublin exhibit of the Easter, 1916 Rising, I thought both of a Borges short story and Yeats’s famous poem about the event.
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Tag Archives: W. B. Yeats
The Theatricality of Martyrdom
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Easter 1916", Dublin, Easter Rising, Ireland, Irish independence, Jorge Luis Borges, Theme of the Hero and the Traitor Comments closed
Leaving Ireland to Fight
One option for Irishmen leaving the country has been fighting for other countries. Yeats captures this in “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Irish Airman Foresees His Death", Ireland, Irish emigration, war Comments closed
What Made Roger Federer Special
Recently retired Roger Federer had a quality possessed by the 17th century Cavalier poets.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Adam's Curse", "Requiem for Sonora", "Song", "To Lucasta Going to War", If, John Suckling, Mark Kingwell, Peter Bodo, Rafael Nadal, Richard Lovelace, Richard Shelton, Roger Federer, Rudyard Kipling, sprezzatura, To Althea from Prison Comments closed
Gun Violence and Armageddon
Wednesday This past Sunday I shared a number of poems from Lucille Clifton’s Book of Days to reflect on how Christian nationalists, many of them wielding weapons of war, work against Jesus’s goal to bring the kingdom of God to Earth. One poem from the collection particularly stands out in the wake of the mass […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Easter 1916", "armageddon", Buffalo mass shooting, gun violence, Lucille Clifton, Uvalde mass shooting, violence Comments closed
The Second Coming of Trumpism?
Yeats’s “Second Coming” pretty much describes the current GOP, with Trump auditioning to be the rough beast.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Second Coming", authoritarianism, Donald Trump, Trumpism Comments closed
Dreaming of Travel during Covid
A very smart Covid poem circulating on social media at the moment references 11 poems, all about longing to travel.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "Lake Isle of Innisfree", "Sea Fever", "Green Eye of the Yellow God", "Mandalay", "Milford Haven", "Rolling English Road", "Skye Boat Song", "Upon First reading Chapman's Homer", A. E. Housman, COVID-19, Crown, G.K. Chesterton, J. Milton Hayes, John Keats, John Masefield, Kenneth Grahame, Loveliest of Trees, Michael Drayton, Midsummer Night's Dream, Outlanders, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Henry Boulton, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, wind in the willows Comments closed
Reading My Way to Adulthood
As an adolescent, I used fantasy in an attempt to hold on to my childhood innocence and hated “Catcher in the Rye.” Little did I realize that Salinger’s novel describes my struggle.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Circus Animals Desertion", adolescence, Albert Camus, Catcher in the Rye, Coming of Age, existentialism. Jean Paul Sartre, fantasy, J. D. Salinger, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Ring Comments closed
Political Commentary’s Most Cited Poem
The Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne has called Yeats’s “The Second Coming” the most cited poem in political commentary. Yeats may set up a false dichotomy between “passionate intensity” and “lack of conviction,” however.