OPENING PARAGRAPH: POETRY COMPARISON

The similarities between the poem "Black Jackets," by Thom Gunn, and Harryette Mullen's "Black Nikes" fall into three categories. The first is their analogous language. Both Gunn and Mullen use a colloquial diction that agrees with the respective themes of the poems. Second is the proposition of a collectivity that defies earthly temporality. And the third category that relates the two poems, which is a corollary of the second group, is the treatment of materialism. Just as Gunn's poem idealizes materialism as a mode of self-expression, so too does Mullen suggest the importance of money in a "rotting" tangible world.