Tag Archives: William Carlos Williams

Finding God in Silence

By Robin Bates | Published: September 23, 2023

Poet Jennifer Michael gave a talk on finding God through poetry, featuring Berry, Hirshfield, Oliver, and others.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Door", "I Go among the Trees", "Praying", "Silence", "Sometimes", "Whatever is Foreseen in Joy", Asphodel, Asphodel That Greeny Flower, Genesis, Jane Hirshfield, Jennifer Michael, Mary Oliver, Meditation, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wendell Berry, William Wordsworth | Comments closed

Shafts of Golden Light

By Robin Bates | Published: April 11, 2020

Easter Sunday For Easter I offer up two April poems that work as a before and after. First, Rainer Maria Rilke speaks of the “slumbering silence” before everything bursts into flower. Then William Carlos William describes that bursting as almost too much to bear. First the breathless anticipation, then the flowering. In the Rilke poem, […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "April", Easter, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rainer Maria Rilke, Spring | Comments closed

Why Read Lit? Let Me Count the Reasons

By Robin Bates | Published: April 20, 2015

I grapple today about why it is essential to read lit. And what happens to us when we don’t.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Blossom", Asphodel, ethical reading, Great House, Hero with a Thousand Faces, John Milton, Joseph Campbell, Mary Oliver, Nicole Krauss, Paradise Lost, reading | Comments closed

Caution: Don’t Stereotype Immigrants

By Robin Bates | Published: November 11, 2013

William Carlos Williams has a poem that prompts us to see beyond immigrant stereotypes.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Dedication for a Plot of Ground", Dream Act, GOP, immigration reform, politics | Comments closed

Take Me Out to the Lynch Mob

By Robin Bates | Published: July 27, 2013

A baseball poem by William Carlos Williams captures well the two sides of a crowd.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Crowd at the Ball Game", Baseball, crowds, mob violence, mobs, Sports | Comments closed

Forgive Me for Eating Your Plums

By Robin Bates | Published: July 12, 2011

In my experience, no two people respond to William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just to Say” in the same way. More than most short poems, it seems to function as a Rorschach test, with reactions telling us more about the reader than the poem itself.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "This Is Just to Say", analysis, Food, Plums, Relationships, Sigmund Freud | Comments closed

Dying Miserably for Lack of Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: August 11, 2009

Today I want to thank Chris Kalb, whose artwork on this blog was installed yesterday. And also to thank Discovering Oz, my son and his wife’s marketing company, which gave me the idea for setting up this website and blog and then helped me carry it out. In the illustration you see before you, the […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged American pragmatism, Asphodel That Greeny Flower, Bible King James version, Crafty Reader, Psalm 23, Robert Scholes | Comments closed