Yeats’s “Easter, 1916” is a profound meditation on activism, including on the poet’s ambivalent feelings about Dublin’s Easter Rising.
Tag Archives: W. H. Auden
Terrible Beauty Born from Easter 1916?
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Easter 1916", David Mamet, Easter uprising, Irish independence, Maud Gonne, Paul Muldoon, Terrorism, William Butler Yeats Comments closed
Was the Moon Landing Poetic? A Debate
Friday As tomorrow will be the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing, I went looking for literature that marked the occasion. A useful New York Times article, written 20 years after the event, surveyed the field and alerted me to the two poems that I share today. Interestingly, not much was written, leading to the […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "World is too much with us", "Moon Landing", "Voyage to the Moon", Archibald MacLeish, lunar landing, Neil Armstrong, Of a Fire on the Moon, William Wordsworth Comments closed
Embattled Humanities Remain Vital
The humanities at the moment are reeling but society’s need for them is as urgent as ever.
Seeing the Beauty in an Invalid
As I sat by the hospital bed of a dear friend holding her hand, the well-known opening lines from Auden’s “Lullaby” came to mind:
Joy of Life Revealed in Love’s Creation
In Auden’s “Christmas Oratorio,” the shepherds stand in for the working class, who find love and personhood in the birth of Jesus.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Christmas Oratorio", "Nativity", Christmas, For the Time Being, shepherds Comments closed
Can Art Thwart Trump? A Debate
In which I argue with a writer who claims that art and artists have an inflated sense of their power and that they are irrelevant in the battle against Donald Trump.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Donald Trump, Grapes of Wrath, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Invisible Man, John Steinbeck, propaganda, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, social realism, socialist realism, Uncle Tom's Cabin Comments closed
And the Light Shineth in the Darkness…
Auden’s Advent section in “For the Time Being” captures the pessimism that many feel about the world today. Luckily, the poem moves on to the Christmas promise.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Advent, For the Time Being, refugee crisis, Terrorism Comments closed
Can Poetry Respond Adequately to Evil?
Americans turned to Auden’s “September 1, 1939” following 9-11, and it can inspire and guide us following the Paris terror attacks.
