Tag Archives: Walt Whitman

A Teacher, Lit, & a Jailed Student

By Robin Bates | Published: November 16, 2017

In “Reading with Patrick,” English teacher Michelle Kuo works with a student in 8th grade and then later after he has killed a man. The story brings up questions about lit’s impact.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Song of Myself", C. S. Lewis, Frederick Douglass, Gilead, Hansberry (Lorraine), Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lorraine Hansberry, Marilynne Robinson, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, poverty, Prison, Raisin in the Sun | Comments closed

Obama Was Invisible to White America

By Robin Bates | Published: August 16, 2017

A Salon article explores how some of white supremacism’s rise can be traced to rage over having had a black president. Quoting Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” it makes the case that the right couldn’t really see Obama.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Song of Myself", Barack Obama, Democratic Vistas, Donald Trump, Dreams of My Father, Invisible Man, racism, Ralph Ellison | Comments closed

Dear Trump: America Contains Multitudes

By Robin Bates | Published: July 4, 2017

To celebrate July 4, do not listen to Donald Trump, who preaches paranoia and exclusion. Read Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” His America contains multitudes.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Song of Myself", Diversity, Donald Trump, Immigration, July 4 | Comments closed

Poems To Mourn a Russian History Prof

By Robin Bates | Published: September 11, 2016

When a Russian history professor died at our college, his colleagues turned to poetry as they wrestled with his premature death. Ovid, Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Turgenev, and Walt Whitman provided powerful words.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Song of Myself", Alexander Pushkin, death and dying, Ivan Turgenev, Metamorphoses, Ovid | Comments closed

Be Skeptical of Shakespeare’s Skeptics

By Robin Bates | Published: July 5, 2016

Recent evidence further confirms what most Shakespeare scholars believe: that Shakespeare wrote the plays ascribed to him. The Bard’s social anxieties, however, may have communicated themselves to the skeptics, who play out their own anxieties as they attempt to tear him down.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charlie Chaplin, Edward de Vere, Francis Bacon, Mark Twain, Shakespeare authorship debate, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

America’s Dream: We Contain Multitudes

By Robin Bates | Published: June 23, 2016

My Trinidadian daughter-in-law today becomes an American citizen. I welcome her with an excerpt from Whitman’s “Song of Myself” that contains multitudes.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Song of Myself", citizenship, Diversity, Immigration, USA | Comments closed

Memorial Day: I Am the Grass, I Cover All

By Robin Bates | Published: May 29, 2016

Carl Sandburg’s outward stoicism masks a deep grief as he memorializes those killed in battle in “Grass.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Grass", "Song of Myself", "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", battles, Carl Sandburg, Memorial Day, Pete Seeger, war | Comments closed

Whitman, Melville & Abolitionism

By Robin Bates | Published: May 1, 2015

Walt Whitman and Herman Melville’s revolutionary visions of egalitarian societies shaped how Abolitionists thought about America’s potential.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Abolition Movement, Civil War, Herman Melville, Leaves of Grass, Moby Dick, slavery | Comments closed

Mourning Lincoln, Mourning My Son

By Robin Bates | Published: April 30, 2015

Whitman’s mourning of Lincoln in “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” also captures what it feels like to lose a child.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", death and dying, death of a child, elegies, mourning | Comments closed