write a comparative analysis essay
Harris_
EllenBass.pptxThe Rolling Stones
English rock band formed in London in 1962
Other/Outsider status: identified with youthful and rebellious counterculture of the 60s; experimented with unique mash-up of blues and rock-n-roll; produced music in opposition to The Beatles
Song: “Start Me Up”
Suggested by: Brittany Flaherty
Ellen Bass
From New Jersey
Highly decorated poet, editor, and nonfiction writer
Poetry: Like a Beggar; The Human Line; and Mules of Love
Nonfiction: Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth; I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse; and The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
(sold over a million copies and has been translated into ten languages)
Ellen Bass
Common themes: sexuality, the body, relationships (romantic & familial), gender roles, love, humanness
Narrative style:
“I work to speak in a voice that is meaningful communication. Poetry is the most intimate of all writing. I want to speak from me to myself and then from me to you.”
Like a Beggar (2014)
Explores life’s essential question: How do we go on?
Poems inhabit sorrow/suffering but are rich with praise
Focus on irony and absurdity of flawed human existence
But those dark, deadly, devastating ways, how do you bear them, suffer them?
--- I praise.
(Rainer Marie Rilke)
Nakedness
Poem of praise
38 couplets, +
1 final line
Enjambment creates tension, multiple layers of meaning
Uses list effect to connect with range of readers
How does the title influence the way you understand the poem?
What are the primary subjects and images?
What is the meaning or message?
Literary devices? Extended metaphor?
Narrative or lyric poem?
Nakedness
“We are all so terribly imperfect — starting with myself. And that willingness to feel, even a little, what someone else is feeling is what joins us most intimately to others. I think compassion is dependent upon imagination. It takes imagination to feel what someone else might feel. And in that way, it’s deeply connected to the creative imagination, to poetry.” --EB
How I Became Miss America
How I Became Miss America
Poem of praise/celebration
Stichic
Challenges gender norms & stereotypes
Objectification of women
Two stories (past and present) frame issues
How does the title influence the way you understand the poem?
What are the primary subjects and images?
What is the meaning or message?
Similes, metaphors, literary devices?
Narrative or lyric poem?
Others/Outsiders
How do the poems from today and Monday (“Genesissy” “Kathryn and Yale” “Nakedness” & “How I Became Miss America”) reflect the concept of Otherness? Explain.
9
2nd Midterm: Sneak Peek!
Discuss a meaningful connection between two or more of our course texts (excluding Frankenstein and The Shape of Water and aside from our theme of Others & Outsiders)
Move beyond surface level connections (e.g. Bass and Brown write poetry…)
