Name: ____________________________ Class: _______ Identity Poem
1. Brainstorm: Write about your identity. Who are you? What makes you unique? In your notebook, make a list, web, or write prose.
2. Turn this into an identity poem. You can use one of the following poems as a guide and imitate the style or create your own format. First, we will read and discuss examples. Next, draft your own poem.
The Partial Portrait by Denise Galang
When people see my ink black hair and slanted eyes, they think I am Chinese or Japanese, but really I am a Pinay whose parents immigrated to the US from the Philippines in the 60's.
When people see how short I am (4feet11inches), they want to pick me up and call me cute, but really I have feisty Pacquiao fists that strike with speed at anyone who tries to pick me up.
When people look at me, they see black frames, short black hair streaked with white, simple flats, mostly vintagey clothes, yellow-brown skin.
What people don't see are my childhood in Jamaica, Queens, thousands of books I’ve read, my MFA in poetry writing, fragments of travels and falls, pains of birth and passions of parenting, my love of cities, especially New York, my fear of drowning and fantasies of surfing, that Walt Whitman is my guru and so is Nina Simone, that I am a vegetarian who grew up eating dinuguan and krispy pata, dishes made of various animal parts, that my pancreas is defective and doesn't produce insulin so I must wear hi-tech devices on my skin to check my glucose and give me synthetic insulin.
When I first look at you, I see the tints of your skin and hair, contours of your face, the style of your clothes. But there is so much more I don’t see, so much more that only your words can bring into view.
And that is why you see me here in Rm 103, knowing that words are visions, finding ways of seeing past the surface, looking beyond faces and facades, finding ways of seeing and hearing through words, actions, and images, so that who I am continues to grow.
Now, write your own poem. Writing prompts and guidelines:
general guidelines - include physical details, feelings, contrasts, likes and dislikes, proper nouns, surprising and specific details; try to zoom in on yourself
for your poem, consider line breaks and form; where should you end each line? What type of poem do you want to write - free verse or rhyming stanzas, sonnet or series of haikus?
Poem structure - use this structure or create your own:
When people see me, they see (describe 3 physical features)...
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
But they don’t see (describe 3 things about you people don’t see such as your family and ancestry, foods that represent you, objects, activities, languages, hopes and dreams, or accomplishments)...
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
I want people to see me as (1 concluding sentence that sums up how you want people to see you)...
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Here are two more poems to read and use as inspiration:
Self-Portrait by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh
Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter
half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shosta
kovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers--but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
I like to take long walks on Paris streets
and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,
anger, desire; to trace a silver coin
passing from hand to hand as it slowly
loses its round shape (the emperor's profile is erased).
Beside me trees expressing nothing
but a green, indifferent perfection.
Black birds pace the fields,
waiting patiently like Spanish widows.
I'm no longer young, but someone else is always older.
I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,
and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars and
houses
dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.
Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me
and irony suddenly vanishes.
I love gazing at my wife's face.
Every Sunday I call my father.
Every other week I meet with friends,
thus proving my fidelity.
My country freed itself from one evil. I wish
another liberation would follow.
Could I help in this? I don't know.
I'm truly not a child of the ocean,
as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,
but a child of air, mint and cello
and not all the ways of the high world
cross paths with the life that--so far--
belongs to me.
Ishle Yi Park is – by Ishle Yi Park
a crushed red cosmos.
a crying stone.
a soldier walking through the ruins of a heart.
amazed at the cruelty of x-lovers.
chin up, head high,
queening up instead of bowing down to that king of grief.
a boxcutter under the tongue.
a walled city.
a sky looted of stars.
a crescent moon cutting midnight.
a rusted Chinese star.
a supernova’s sister.
a siren song.
a busted 12-string guitar.
a heron taking flight at dusk to a dim horizon.
a loaded, heavy shotgun.
a collapsed lung.
a mewling cry.
shattered glass in asphalt.
diamond cut eyes.
quicksand.
down Haruki’s well with her demons.
a shivering horse flank in a barn no one remembers.
a 77 VHS cassette korean melodrama.
goddamn wishing her delivery guys worked weekends.
waiting for hate to replace the han.
wondering how to melt dry ice.
deciding it’s not worth it.
walking away, not looking back,
hard wind on her face, like the legends
she sings of, lovers on arirang mountain
parting over 10 li of distance & time,
both swearing only
the other
will carry the ache.
1. Write a 1st draft of identity poem in your notebook. Due: ____________________
2. Share your poem in class and revise, type, print, and publish on your blog.
Due: ____________________________
1. Brainstorm: Write about your identity. Who are you? What makes you unique? In your notebook, make a list, web, or write prose.
2. Turn this into an identity poem. You can use one of the following poems as a guide and imitate the style or create your own format. First, we will read and discuss examples. Next, draft your own poem.
The Partial Portrait by Denise Galang
When people see my ink black hair and slanted eyes, they think I am Chinese or Japanese, but really I am a Pinay whose parents immigrated to the US from the Philippines in the 60's.
When people see how short I am (4feet11inches), they want to pick me up and call me cute, but really I have feisty Pacquiao fists that strike with speed at anyone who tries to pick me up.
When people look at me, they see black frames, short black hair streaked with white, simple flats, mostly vintagey clothes, yellow-brown skin.
What people don't see are my childhood in Jamaica, Queens, thousands of books I’ve read, my MFA in poetry writing, fragments of travels and falls, pains of birth and passions of parenting, my love of cities, especially New York, my fear of drowning and fantasies of surfing, that Walt Whitman is my guru and so is Nina Simone, that I am a vegetarian who grew up eating dinuguan and krispy pata, dishes made of various animal parts, that my pancreas is defective and doesn't produce insulin so I must wear hi-tech devices on my skin to check my glucose and give me synthetic insulin.
When I first look at you, I see the tints of your skin and hair, contours of your face, the style of your clothes. But there is so much more I don’t see, so much more that only your words can bring into view.
And that is why you see me here in Rm 103, knowing that words are visions, finding ways of seeing past the surface, looking beyond faces and facades, finding ways of seeing and hearing through words, actions, and images, so that who I am continues to grow.
Now, write your own poem. Writing prompts and guidelines:
general guidelines - include physical details, feelings, contrasts, likes and dislikes, proper nouns, surprising and specific details; try to zoom in on yourself
for your poem, consider line breaks and form; where should you end each line? What type of poem do you want to write - free verse or rhyming stanzas, sonnet or series of haikus?
Poem structure - use this structure or create your own:
When people see me, they see (describe 3 physical features)...
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
But they don’t see (describe 3 things about you people don’t see such as your family and ancestry, foods that represent you, objects, activities, languages, hopes and dreams, or accomplishments)...
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
I want people to see me as (1 concluding sentence that sums up how you want people to see you)...
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Here are two more poems to read and use as inspiration:
Self-Portrait by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh
Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter
half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shosta
kovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers--but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
I like to take long walks on Paris streets
and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,
anger, desire; to trace a silver coin
passing from hand to hand as it slowly
loses its round shape (the emperor's profile is erased).
Beside me trees expressing nothing
but a green, indifferent perfection.
Black birds pace the fields,
waiting patiently like Spanish widows.
I'm no longer young, but someone else is always older.
I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,
and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars and
houses
dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.
Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me
and irony suddenly vanishes.
I love gazing at my wife's face.
Every Sunday I call my father.
Every other week I meet with friends,
thus proving my fidelity.
My country freed itself from one evil. I wish
another liberation would follow.
Could I help in this? I don't know.
I'm truly not a child of the ocean,
as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,
but a child of air, mint and cello
and not all the ways of the high world
cross paths with the life that--so far--
belongs to me.
Ishle Yi Park is – by Ishle Yi Park
a crushed red cosmos.
a crying stone.
a soldier walking through the ruins of a heart.
amazed at the cruelty of x-lovers.
chin up, head high,
queening up instead of bowing down to that king of grief.
a boxcutter under the tongue.
a walled city.
a sky looted of stars.
a crescent moon cutting midnight.
a rusted Chinese star.
a supernova’s sister.
a siren song.
a busted 12-string guitar.
a heron taking flight at dusk to a dim horizon.
a loaded, heavy shotgun.
a collapsed lung.
a mewling cry.
shattered glass in asphalt.
diamond cut eyes.
quicksand.
down Haruki’s well with her demons.
a shivering horse flank in a barn no one remembers.
a 77 VHS cassette korean melodrama.
goddamn wishing her delivery guys worked weekends.
waiting for hate to replace the han.
wondering how to melt dry ice.
deciding it’s not worth it.
walking away, not looking back,
hard wind on her face, like the legends
she sings of, lovers on arirang mountain
parting over 10 li of distance & time,
both swearing only
the other
will carry the ache.
1. Write a 1st draft of identity poem in your notebook. Due: ____________________
2. Share your poem in class and revise, type, print, and publish on your blog.
Due: ____________________________
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