Part B: Close Reading of \u201cBlack Nikes\u201d<\/p>\n
Harryette Mullen\u2019s \u201cBlack Nikes\u201d expresses the desire for escape and transcendence by juxtaposing cosmic imagery with the dirt and soil of our muddy planet. \u201cWe need quarters like King Tut needed a boat,\u201d the poem begins, introducing the collective speaker, a group of individuals who have \u201clived quietly among the stars, knowing money isn\u2019t what matters.\u201d They say they live among the stars, yet they are still tied to the finite materiality of earth: \u201cTime is rotting as our bodies wait for now I lay me down to earth.\u201d The speakers exist between a spiritual fascination with the reaches of space (\u201cwhat we want is star dust\u201d) and a physical imprisonment on the planet.<\/p>\n
The poem also weaves the motif of money and purchase throughout, from the speakers\u2019 claim that they know what really matters, and it isn\u2019t money, to the \u201cexpensive appliance\u201d nature allegedly hates, to products like \u201cour new persuasion shoes.\u201d The debasing power of money is another factor pushing them toward \u201cthe thrill of victory\u201d resulting from \u201cleaving all this dirt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part C: Question 2<\/p>\n
I find that Mullen\u2019s speakers often have more presence than their subjects. The inquisitive, reflective speaker in \u201cWhy You and I\u201d dominates the work, providing the sole voice through which the reader interprets the poem. While the subject may seem more central to a work like \u201cElliptical,\u201d I would argue that the speaker is still the controlling force with which the reader has the most connection. Even with the gaps in the poem that seem to call attention to the subject rather than the speaker, the poem\u2019s choppy cadence reads more like the unique diction pattern of a speaker rather than a complete sequence of phrases from which certain parts have been removed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Part B: Close Reading of \u201cBlack Nikes\u201d Harryette Mullen\u2019s \u201cBlack Nikes\u201d expresses the desire for escape and transcendence by juxtaposing cosmic imagery with the dirt and soil of our muddy planet. \u201cWe need quarters like King Tut needed… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interventions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3509,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497\/revisions\/3509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}