Tag Archives: William Carlos Williams

ICE and W.C. Williams’s Ice Box Theft

By Robin Bates | Published: November 25, 2025

An Atlantic article applies Williams’s famous plum poet to the “Sandwich Guy” arrested by ICE for “hurling a hoagie.” But the poem applies more to the agents.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "This Is Just to Say", ICE, Sandwich Guy | Comments closed

Irony and the GOP’s Big Beautiful Bill

By Robin Bates | Published: May 26, 2025

The GOP’s “big beautiful bill” is perfect in its rottenness–like William Carlos Williams’ rotten apple in “Perfection.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Hellas: A Chorus", "Ode to the West Wind", "Shine Perishing Republica", American decadence, Big Beautiful Bill, GOP, Percy Shelley, Perfection, Robinson Jeffers | Comments closed

On the Leopards Eating Faces Party

By Robin Bates | Published: March 17, 2025

Some liberals are finding solace in remorseful Trumpists wondering how the “Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party” could have turned on THEM. Kipling’s story about the leopard’s spots is worth revisiting here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "At Kenneth Burke's Place", "Epistle from Mrs. Younge to Her Husband", Donald Trump, FAFO, How the Leopard Got His Spots, Just So Stories, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Leopards Eating People's Faces Party, MAGA remorse | Comments closed

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