Tag Archives: William Butler Yeats

Terrible Beauty Born from Easter 1916?

By Robin Bates | Published: April 21, 2023

Yeats’s “Easter, 1916” is a profound meditation on activism, including on the poet’s ambivalent feelings about Dublin’s Easter Rising.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", David Mamet, Easter uprising, Irish independence, Maud Gonne, Paul Muldoon, Terrorism, W. H. Auden | Comments closed

A Fiddler for St. Patrick’s Day

By Robin Bates | Published: March 16, 2021

A jolly Yeats poem for St. Patrick’s Day.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged fiddlers, St. Patrick's Day | Comments closed

The Ice Storm Cometh

By Robin Bates | Published: February 15, 2021

We’re currently undergoing a potentially severe ice storm. Here’s what Robert Frost has to say about ice storms.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Circus Animals Desertion", Birches, ice storms, Robert Frost | Comments closed

Yeats, Not Heaney, for Dark Times

By Robin Bates | Published: December 10, 2020

For social and political barometers, try Heaney for optimism, Yeats for pessimism.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Cure of Troy", "The House of the Stare", Donald Trump, Election 2020, GOP, Joe Biden, Seamus Heaney | Comments closed

Who Has Begotten the Drops of Dew?

By Robin Bates | Published: September 19, 2020

To celebrate Rosh Hashanah, I share this Anthony Hecht poem about his son Adam, who needs the reassurance that God’s Adam once needed.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Prayer for My Daughter", "Adam", Anthony Hecht, Rosh Hashanah | Comments closed

The Case for Memorizing Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: August 19, 2020

To bolster yourself against this age of anxiety, memorize robust poetry. Other poetry works as well.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Kubla Khan", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Second Coming", "Soldier Rest", "Building of the Ship", "My Candle Burns at Both Ends", "Props assist the House", "Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth", Arthur Clough, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, If, John Keats, Memorizing poetry, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott | Comments closed

Scraping One’s Knees on Jacob’s Ladder

By Robin Bates | Published: July 18, 2020

Denise Levertov draws on the Jacob’s dream about a stairway to heaven to capture poetry’s transcendent qualities.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Altar", "Circus Animals Desertion", "Jacob's Ladder", 9-11 poems, Denise Levertov, George Herbert, Lucille Clifton, sacred spaces, Transcendence | Comments closed

Battling Proud, Wayward Squirrels

By Robin Bates | Published: April 23, 2020

Squirrels are refusing to honor our bird feeders by staying away. Yeats describes squirrels as similarly irreverent. So do Beatrix Potter and John Blades.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Appointment", Beatrix Potter, Small Game, Squirrel Nutkin, squirrels | Comments closed

Is Old Age Becoming Overrated?

By Robin Bates | Published: November 26, 2019

A “New Yorker” article on aging turns to literature to debunk the notion that aging is a good thing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Vanity of Human Wishes", "Sailing to Byzantium", "Tithonous", Aging, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Aristotle, As You Like It, Ecclesiastes, Geoffrey Chaucer, Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, King Lear, Merchant's Tale, old age, Plato, Rasselas, Samuel Johnson, Ulysses, William Shakespeare | Comments closed