Poet's Corner

Identity

Too often, students consider poetry an isolated intellectual pursuit, concerned with the individual's self-expression; this idea hurries past the question of where the poet's sense of "self" comes from in the first place. A number of poems included in Exploring Poetry deal with how individuals find a place for themselves in both the social order and in the broader perspective of natural order. In some of these poems, the question of identity is addressed directly, as the speaker considers another person (often a parent or a child) and what that person's existence says about who the speaker is. There are also poems that consider social situations, or inanimate objects, and consider what these things tell us humans about ourselves. And then there is a whole category of poems that do not raise the question of identity directly, but focus so intently on their subject matter that the speaker is clearly motivated by the need to see him- or herself reflected back. Apostrophes, character sketches, love poems and detailed descriptions that have no stated social context often imply that the author identifies with the subject matter.

In Exploring Poetry, there are abundant examples of ways in which authors approach the idea of identity, such as Keats' "Bright Star! Would I Were as Steadfast as Thou Art," which projects the speaker's desires and ideals onto the star.

Students may not, at first, agree that some of these poems raise issues of self-identity: expanding concepts to see similarities between objects with distinct identities is central to the process of learning. Instructors may encourage students to recognize what groups and categories they belong to by introducing them to contrasting poems that contract or expand their concepts of kinship: a poem about familial relationships, for example, to be assigned in tandem with a poem that praises human attributes in general.

Activity

Summary: Each student will receive a print-out with only the odd- or even-numbered lines of a poem, and will have to write the missing lines, followed by a comparison with the student who worked on the corresponding half of the poem.

Suggested Teaching Strategy: collaborative, meter, rhyme

Learning Outcome Skills: analyzing, composing, combining

Related Curricula: writing, design

Required Time: one to two 50-minute class periods

The instructor should prepare for this activity by printing out two versions of each of the poems being assigned: one with blank space where the even numbered lines are, and one with blank spaces for the odd-numbered lines. Each student will write lines of poetry to fill in the spaces in the poem she or he has been assigned. When the activity is done, have the students pair off with the student who has the missing lines from their poem, to compare how their original writing has diverted from the original piece. In completing this exercise and discussing it, students will be able to see how their own ideas have combined with the author's ideas, and will learn about their own identities and authors' identities in general.