Marian Haddad has my full attention this week. She and I are having a great conversation about what it means to identify (or not identify) through place. Starting with the title, I am drawn in because I've lived in the bay area for 16 months and often find myself saying, "I have no history here."
It often feels like I no longer belong to Florida, but that I don't quite belong to California either. This line of thinking brings me to lots of questions about how identity and place work together. I'm Floridian and always will be in many ways, but I also find that I am very much "of" the east bay.
So is identity about what we identify with/as?
Haddad suggests that it has something to do with length of time,
nothing but a year
and a few months of turning
She then goes on to suggest that where we make our home
I have made a home
in a land I never knew
and where we write ourselves is who we are,
I am starting to write myself
down inscribe myself
later she talks about shedding her "southwest skin" and I feel her in that moment of deciding what to keep and what to drop quietly into the grass.
For me, identity is about the micro and the macro, so when I step back and look at this poem with a wider lens, I wonder what the poem does when/if we change the "I" to "We". When I make this shift, the micro moments no longer stand out. Instead, the last five stanzas become an identity of the "we".
something quiet
about this place
this is no desert
the air here is damp
water seems present
where water is not
my southwest skin
has scaled off
dropping quietly
into this grass
place starts to take on an identity. It has sound and it feels and we can see it and hear it and if we back up three stanzas, we can taste it,
are we not all welcome
in this salty land by sea
Haddad reminds me that identity exists on many levels from the "i" to the "I" to the "We" and with those, there is the spectator and the participator and identity can be different depending on which "-tor" you happen to be.
I'm struggling with the concept of "Identity" in my poetry (yes, capital 'I') so when I come across poems that deal with it in fresh and unexpected ways, I am fascinated and inspired at the same time. This poem does that for me.
Hopefully our discussion this week will spark (or fuel) further conversation about the role of identity in our own writing and dealings with the world.
peacelovelight
Kiala
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I'm feeling what your saying about the disconnect between place and feeling like you have no history. I grew up in the bay area and went to Minnesota for undergrad. Like Haddad I didn't feel completely connected to the place and there is a distance between me and MN even now. But I know I have left pieces of myself there and created a kind of history there through that act.
ReplyDeletei agree with you Kiala and I love love the way you point out the I and the I . I also love the idea of you having a conversation with Haddad. I wonder if it ever really possible to feel like you have a home. Physical places are constantly changing. I like to think that someday I will have an enternal home so that I don't blow like the grass everytime the physical place I reside changes.
ReplyDeleteSuki
kg- i was intrigued and stumped by your differentiation of the lowercase i vs the uppercase I ... what is the history behind the switch from one to the other? i can think of bell hooks and asha bandele, who don't capitalize their names (death of the author? ... this phrase jumps into my mind) but what is that really all about? and how does the I/i of an author's identity fit into it? -jl
ReplyDeleteKiala,
ReplyDeleteYour post pushes and pulls from your truth, and I feel you about feeling no longer from some place but still planting roots in your current place. Even though San Jose is less than an hour away, its miles away from Oakland and San Francisco. Memories that are no longer sweet about San Jose kinds of hangs around my identity, calls me to write about that more, whereas, I could get myself lost in an identity I can recreate in a new city. Thank you for your post!
Melissa
I totally agree with your post! I was raised in L.A and moved to Oakland last year and in a way i cannot feel fully at home here. Yet, it is home to a certain extent because I have created memories and developed as a person, a different experience from L.A. It's funny because when I go back to L.A to visit I long to be back in Oakland and vice versa. Therefore, the places we are at in the moment of time make up our identity because that is the place where we create life!
ReplyDeleteCordova's "Of Sorts" focused in on the theme of writing oneself as well. Like you, a Florida transplant, I don't belong to California either and the position I hold is liminal, in between. But I can always find a home in writing. I can always inscribe myself.
ReplyDeleteit's amazing how the immigrant experience has translated into fuzzier borders. i can see how each of you feels the tension around the idea of home. that tension is part of what makes a writer alive, searching.
ReplyDeletee