Tag Archives: poetry

The Chariot That Bears a Human Soul

By Robin Bates | Published: December 9, 2021

Dickinson’s “There is no frigate like a book” captures the transcendent nature of poetry.

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A Divine Stairway of Sharp Angles

By Robin Bates | Published: July 20, 2014

Levertov uses to story of Jacob’s Ladder to describe the miracle of poetry.

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In the Beginning Was the Word

By Robin Bates | Published: December 29, 2013

The opening of the Book of John is poetry of the first order.

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Poetry Is Stupid (But Will Save Your Life)

By Robin Bates | Published: January 18, 2013

Reading poetry is a life insurance policy for when things go bad, Housman tells us.

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Poetry, a Lifeline for the Desperate

By Robin Bates | Published: July 20, 2012

In Lee Chang Dong’s “Poetry,” an old woman poetry as a way to address the overwhelming challenges of her life.

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Nature or Poetry? Choose Both

By Robin Bates | Published: June 15, 2010

“The world is filled with the grandeur of God.” “The sounding cataract haunted me like a passion.” In my last two posts, I reported how poetry sprang to mind as I walked through some of California’s natural wonders, specifically Big Basin Redwoods State Park and Yosemite National Park.  Today I meditate on the relationship of […]

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Saving Poetry from English Teachers

By Robin Bates | Published: August 21, 2009

Poetry used to play a much larger role in our culture than it does today.  That, at any rate, is the opinion of literary scholar Robert Scholes in his wonderfully provocative The Crafty Reader (Yale, 2001).  Scholes’ book is provocative in part because of where he puts the blame:  “I would like to suggest that […]

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Poetry vs. the Decline of Civilization

By Robin Bates | Published: August 19, 2009

  I was listening to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion this past weekend and marveling yet again at his ability to pull me into his stories about the Lake Woebegone citizenry.  His account of a school field trip may have been a summer repeat—I’m not sure because I came into the program late.  In any […]

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