Ms. Favolise's Creative Literacy Class! : Identity Poems! End of Term!

Good Afternoon Everyone!

7th Graders turned in their identity poems for the end of the term and they look great! Students analyzed "Identity" by Julio Polanco is an extended metaphor poem that is below:

Identity
by Julio Noboa Polanco

Let them be as flowers,
always watered, fed, guarded, admired,
but harnessed to a pot of dirt.

I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed,
clinging on cliffs, like an eagle
wind-wavering above high, jagged rocks.

To have broken through the surface of stone,
to live, to feel exposed to the madness
of the vast, eternal sky.
To be swayed by the breezes of an ancient sea,
carrying my soul, my seed,
beyond the mountains of time or into the abyss of the bizarre.

I'd rather be unseen, and if
then shunned by everyone,
than to be a pleasant-smelling flower,
growing in clusters in the fertile valley,
where they're praised, handled, and plucked
by greedy, human hands.

I'd rather smell of musty, green stench
than of sweet, fragrant lilac.
If I could stand alone, strong and free,
I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed.

Polanco tells us a lot about his character by comparing his own personality with that of a weed. Polanco explains that he’d rather be a “tall, ugly, weed” than a “pleasant-smelling flower” because a weed is free in the wild. Our students did their own extended metaphor poems by finding something that they could identify themselves with and writing about it. From cars to animals to food, our students were very creative!