A lot of poems are about identity, but some of my favorites are by Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson.
Hughes' poem "Theme for English B," ostensibly written as a homework assignment for an English class, is a playful meditation on what the young black American man is and is not. Whitman's "Song of Myself" and Dickinson's "I'm nobody. Who are you?" are two very different poems about the speaker's self; Whitman's is expansive and eager to include everything within himself, whereas Dickinson's seems modest but playfully interested in smaller, meaningful friendships or communities.
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