Identity

“Identity” (1973) is a lyric poem by the 20th-Century Latino poet and educator Julio Noboa Polanco. The poem, though written in free verse and influenced by modernist forms, has a heavier influence from the European Romantic tradition. Like William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Noboa Polanco employs botanical imagery, metaphors, and personification to reveal the speaker’s inner thoughts. Noboa Polanco’s poem also draws from American Romanticism; the poem’s insistence on individuality and nonconformity resonates well with writers like Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, both of whom emphasize self-reliance and individuality.

The poem’s themes reverberate just as strongly today as they did in 1973. In fact, “Identity” has surged in popularity with the advent of the Internet, informing an entirely new generation. As an educator, Noboa also spent much of his later career advocating for Latino representation in American history classes.

Poet Biography

Julio Noboa Polanco was born in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, in 1949. Noboa Polanco wrote “Identity” while he was in the eighth grade, after he broke up with his girlfriend. Noboa Polanco’s Puerto Rican father and a high-school English teacher were major factors in his writing from a young age.