Identity

"Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman (1892)

American poet Walt Whitman’s influential Song of Myself is a notable precursor to Noboa Polanco’s “Identity.” This version of Whitman’s poem was completed in 1892, only one year before his death. Like Noboa Polanco, Whitman uses free verse, anaphora, romantic sentiment, and segments of lyrical fancy to create and assert an identity through poetry. Noboa Polanco also follows Whitman in extolling the virtues of common natural phenomena. In Section 32 of the poem, Whitman’s speaker envisions insects as divine, for instance. Throughout Song of Myself, Whitman praises common individuality over idealistic heroism.

"The Sensitive Plant" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)

Unlike the American Romanticism of Noboa Polanco and Whitman, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Sensitive Plant” came from the tradition of English Romanticism. While Shelley uses similar botanical metaphors to those in “Identity,” the tone of Shelley’s poem is more constrained and sentimental. Part of this is due to the formal constrictions typical of European Romanticism. The titular plant in Shelley’s poem shares many features with Noboa Polanco’s flowers: It needs to be taken care of and is opposed to “ugly weeds” (Line 213). But Shelley envisions the plant’s sensitivity as a positive rather than a negative, and in this way it contrasts well with Noboa Polanco’s poem.