Identity

Am I wrong to read Langston Hughes poem “As I Grew Older” optimistically? It begins with “It was a long time ago,” and I feel as if he has realized something in the intervening time about how to achieve his dream, how to “break through” the obstacles – the wall, the shadow, his blackness – that are preventing him from reaching it. He sees his dream “bright like a sun,” and he uses his “hands! [His own] dark hands!” to find the dream and “shatter the darkness.” I read this poem, and I find a message of taking control over one’s future. Our speaker redefines the blackness of himself to achieve his dream rather than let it stand in his way. He is capable of taking the pieces and putting them back together to again see the sun.

This vision of the sun appears again in Marian Haddad’s “I Have No History Here.” The sun here also represents a change in the poet’s view, and she makes a transition from having no history in her new location to acclimating. Her lack of punctuation in this piece is so interesting to me. The white spaces provide the separation and hesitation, but it’s almost seamless in the way it happens. We go from the past to the future, and, because there is no final period, there is no end. She drops into the grass with all of its allusions to growth and new beginnings. How does this occur? How has she “made a home/in a land [she] never knew?” Not only does she “write” herself, she “inscribes” herself. She re-creates her identity in a place that is unfamiliar by writing, expressing, and permanently putting her mark.

The line “are we not all welcome” keeps reading “we are not all welcome” to me, and I sense her discomfort in making this transition. She finds comrades “in-between the crowds” and the sun “between hills.” This “in-between-ness” is emphasized and is familiar to anyone who is limbo. You want to instantly belong when you make a move, but that can’t happen. There’s “something quiet” about discovering a new place – a quiet joy, but also a quiet trepidation. Will you fit in? Will you find others with whom you can identify? They won’t know your history; they will only know what you tell them and what they perceive.

Steven Cordova’s poem “Of Sorts” gave me similar impressions. Our speaker is someplace he never expected to be. He says, “you’re in a place...you didn’t plan to go; but a place you did buy the ticket to.” Even when you have bought the ticket, things don’t always turn out the way you had planned. You cannot anticipate how things will be before you get there. His poem, like Langston’s, speaks of dreams, and there are connections to be made between the idea of a dream as a goal and the idea of a dream as what our unconscious experiences and demonstrates when we are asleep. These ideas are intertwined in this poem when we’re told that it must be “writ[ten] down. Or it will leave...” The idea of writing as the method of holding onto something and, in some sense, making it real connects again to Haddad’s poem. The dream becomes tangible and recognizable the way “myself” does. It gets it out of your head and onto paper, and it’s easier to deal with. Cordova uses the word “philander” to describe how dreams cheat the transition “between present, past, and future.” We want to experience all simultaneously, and although physically, we cannot do this, aren’t we the sum total of our experiences? I may have relocated to a different location, but don’t I bring with me the place I was before? Am I the same person, or can I really leave my baggage behind?

These poems spoke to me on personal level because I have moved so many times and have had to start over in new locations. Each move has been an enriching experience, but it’s also been painful. When you leave behind what’s familiar, you leave behind your support systems, and you often leave behind what’s been keeping you grounded. Each time, you have to redefine yourself and overcome “the wall,” the “shadow.” Perhaps if I had been writing poetry about these changes, it would have given me an outlet to articulate the feelings and made it easier to make the “whirling” pieces fit together in their new configuration.

Sheila Joseph