“Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people.” Prince

“Identity” is defined as “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is; a close similarity or affinity.” We develop our identities from birth, test the waters with them throughout childhood, and crystallize who we are in adolescence.

But after high school, I got the distinct feeling that you were supposed to know who you were and you were not expected to deviate away from that. That implies that your identity in adulthood is generalized stagnation.

Stagnation prevents knowledge, prevents acceptance of the strangeness society simply is, and builds a spiritual wall between ourselves and the world at large.

How many people do you personally know that are unable to walk away from the stagnation of their identity in the current version of their life? I know many. I was that person at one point.

The resounding refrain from those who cling to the static definition of identity is “I cannot do that.” My armchair diagnosis is that in order to let go of the person they were yesterday, they must remove the “cannot” from their vocabularies.

Therefore, I argue that the following poems advise us that we are able to change the definition of identity and realize that it is fluid, that it is merely a stepping stone to becoming the best person we can possibly be.

Nathalie Handal says in the prologue of “Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond” that “the speaker’s lines become a way to recollect the past and present, become prayer and meditation, ultimately declaring the importance for us to know that we have the final choice when it comes to the direction we want to take.”

Who you were yesterday is not who you are today. Who you are today is not who you will be tomorrow. The only way to accept this is to be conscious of it and embrace it when the opportunity comes along.

And in that vein, the three poems I chose reflect an aspect of my past, present and future identity.

1.Past: Allegra with Spirit, p. 522

2.Present: The Hill p. 480

3.Future: The Wolf’s Hour, p. 498