Function: Poet
Notion: Identity
Identity is truly an abstract notion,
Asking the question of “who am I?”
From the way we dress to our showing of emotion;
These are some things to distinguish us all by.
Identity is hard to get a grip on,
Not easy to understand and even less to explain.
You can ponder on it from dusk till dawn
And still come to the conclusion that such effort is in vain.
Identity can be a lot of things:
Numerical, gender related, and philosophical, too.
It all depends on the definition which to your mind springs,
I may think very differently of it compared to you.
Identity is not about personality – or is it?
Personal identity is said to persist through time and space,
But in order to remain the same person, your personality must surely fit
What was always your identity in the first place.
Identity is indeed an abstract notion,
It keeps asking the question of “who am I?”
Although intangible, it’s always in motion
And persists until the day we die.
Reflection:
I chose to take on the author function of the poet, which allowed me to compose a poem with a rhyme scheme. If I were to write about the abstract notion of identity using the author function of the writer or novelist, I would have been able to flesh it out a lot more and perhaps create more of an essay-like outpour of thoughts, but it would not have the structure of the poem, nor the rhyme. Seeing as poetry uses a lot less words than novels, the meaning has to be rather concise and boiled down in poetry. A discussion of an abstract notion such as identity would also have been possible to conduct through something like dialogue in a novel, for instance, whereas that is not as easily achievable in a poem.
Nicely done poem - unusual in the sense that poetry rarely handles a notion 'directly' in argumentative discourse (something that non-fiction routinely does), as opposed to 'indirectly' as a thematic or symbolic content.
ReplyDeleteSo, you actually have attained the 'essay-like' discourse in the poem, while also adding the rhyme-scheme and other 'poetical' features.
Good poem! I really like how you captured the emotions and frustrations most people can relate to about their identity and how you ask the question of "who am I?" more than once since this is a question people ask themselves probably more than once in their life.
ReplyDeleteI applaud to the fact that that your poem handles the notion of identity so directly.
ReplyDeleteEven though we are taught that poems most commonly address issues or notions through metaphors or/and often in riddles, this puts a lot of thought to your mind, and it is for once without having to analyse every single line in the stanzas - which I found very enjoyable :-)
I like how you started and ended with the sentence "Identity is indeed an abstract notion" - it creates some sort of common thread through the poem.
ReplyDelete