Poetic Identity in Guillaume de Machaut

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Going further, Keats jocoseriously tells Woodhouse that, while it is “a wretched thing to confess,” it is (and here he anticipates the poststructural demystification of the “mistaken” view of the subject as cohesive and self-identical) a “very fact that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature—how can it, when I have no nature?” ( Letters 1:387).

CSP: I would say my parents. I think they’re very brave people to have migrated to California, when they were middle aged, later in life. They worked very hard and they've definitely inspired me.Polanco uses a number of literary devices that enhance the meaning of the poem. Explore the important ones below: Simile Polanco’s poem “Identity,” if studied from the biographical perspective, aptly shows the desire of a speaker seeking his unique identity of being a Latino in a culturally diverse country. History shows how Latinos nearly disappeared under the inclusive categories of immigrants and people of color. Their identity was lost under these ethnic bifurcations. They were never appropriately mentioned by their names.

Blain, V. (1999) ‘Sexual Politics of the (Victorian) Closet; or, No Sex Please–We’re Poets’, in I. Armstrong and V. Blain (eds), Women’s Poetry: Late Romantic to Late Victorian, Gender and Genre, 1830–1890 (Basingstoke: Macmillan), pp. 135–163. The poem continues to illustrate what individuality brings and what freedom of being alone means. Breaking through the “surface of stone” is like a bold move against the rigid conventions, to accomplish the impossible for self-liberation. According to the speaker, individuality opens a wide canvas of infinities: “To have broken,” “to live,” “to feel exposed” and “To be swayed.” The poetaster makes use of hyperboles to describe what standing alone means: “to feel exposed to the madness/ of the vast, eternal sky” and “To be swayed by the breezes of an ancient sea.” Since I’ve been an adult I’ve been active in the Chamorro sovereignty movement as well as the decolonial and demilitarization movements both on Guam and in Hawaii. Wordsworth, W. and S. T. Coleridge (2013) Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1802 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Extract

In the first stanza of “Identity,” Polanco uses the trope of “flowers” to describe those who he staunchly rejects. The flower is a symbol that depicts something which is not only beautiful but also highly loved and admired. They are taken care of, “watered, fed, guarded, admired” because they stand on the expectations of people. However, it is in the last line of this tercet when the speaker unveils the dark reality of being nice and beautiful as flowers. He reveals how the flowers may all be cared for but they are all trapped in the same “pot of dirt.” All the flowers in a bunch look the same and they have no freedom of their own. He uses the animal imagery “harnessing” used for horses to show how pretty flowers are too attached to a mere pot.