Comparative Literature / Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing

Maryann P. DiEdwardo (Lehigh University)

Social Movements initiated by literature include The Beat Generation of the 1940’sand 1950’s which questioned the existence of certain society elements identified with Jack Kerouac from a 1948 conversation with fellow beat poet and author John Clellon. Other social movements by luminaries such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King ask us to re-imagine literary works as social criticism: writers are agents of change. As such, our panelists recognize the writing of Luminaries as daily writing practice paramount to a writer’s ethic. To understand we acknowledge the work of Jacques Derrida in "White Mythology." Derrida’s passage refers to “reverse metaphorization of concepts.” The reversal is such that there can be no final separation between the linguistic-metaphorical and the philosophical realms

The poet Frank Bidart uses narrative strategies. His works of poetry embody flow of human emotions . The pathos appeal to emotions and feelings to persuade an audience. Bidart’s dramatic monologues are in intrapersonal lens into the inner pain innate in the human emotional experience. Frank Bidart was born in Bakersfield, California on May 27, 1939. His recent works include Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 published in 2017. This book won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He is a messenger of hope for us. His writing is prophetic, motivational, and steadily charges forward with exceptional and theoretical foundations. One can see that the poet Frank Bidart uses mythological theory. He mindfully embraces situations of courage and despair in his conversational poetry. As part of the LGBTQIA community, Bidart inspires equality. Therefore, through student-directed pedagogical model, with the models of Kerouac, Hurston, and Bidart, our panel writing engage writers who possess qualities of memory. Accordingly, these three patterns compose voice on the written page. But, writing is an essential like skill needed for human dignity.

Social Movements initiated by literature include The Beat Generation of the 1950’s which questioned the existence of certain society elements identified with Jack Kerouac and others. Other social movements in writing (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King) ask us to re-imagine literary works as social criticism: writers are agents of change and writing as the practice of ethics.