I found your engagement with the poems we read for today really sharp and generative. The creative responses, in particular, generated some really crucial insights. One can read all of these poems as staging a sort of crisis, however quiet, that puts pressure on the self: crises, for example, related to ideologies related to gender, racial justice, nationality, militarism, consumerism, societal norms. The Beats often felt themselves as outsiders, and registered these crises in in unique ways from that vantage point. These poems at times seek a way through or beyond these ideologies, or at times they simply reveal how they are structured and weakly countered. Take 2-3 poems we read for class today, and try to connect them in a way that relates to this broader theme: you could focus on poems that respond similarly to divergent threats; poems that seem profoundly different in their response the same threat. Take 10-15 minutes to compose your thoughts on this question–and feel free to bring in any outside material as well.