Identity

“Identity” uses an extended botanical metaphor to compare two different ways to live one’s life. The “flowers” and the “weeds” stand in as the vehicles of the metaphor and characterize the types of lives people can live. The “flowers” represent a coddled, comfortable life where people live out a uniform existence in conformity to societal norms. The “weeds,” on the other hand, represent a freer, more challenging existence, characterized by individuality and unconventionality.

The characterization of flowers as comfortable and dependent begins from the first stanza, when the speaker describes the flowers as “always watered, fed, guarded, admired” (Line 2). In this line, the flowers are treated well, and even “admired,” but are ultimately dependent on a caretaker. The poem’s grammatical structure emphasizes this dependence by making the flowers passive objects that do not water or fed themselves. Instead, they are “watered, fed” by some unnamed subject, which is likely a stand-in for larger society (Line 2). The flowers are also dependent on each other, and they grow “in clusters in the fertile valley” (Line 16). The flowers’ dependence is first solidified in Line 3, where the speaker describes them as being “harnessed to a pot of dirt.” The word “harnessed” connects the flowers with animal labor, suggesting restraint like a draft animal, with some practical purpose in mind. This idea appears again in the fourth stanza, where the flowers are “praised, handled, and plucked / by greedy, human hands” (Lines 17-18). The “dirt” they are harnessed to, while nutritious to plants (further emphasizing their coddled existence), can also be seen as common, lowly, and undignified.

Weeds, which are typically also seen as common, lowly, and undignified, are arguably preferable to flowers in the second stanza. The speaker begins by saying that they would “rather” be a weed than a flower, despite the weeds being “tall, ugly” and not worthy of admiration (Line 4). Unlike the “harnessed” flowers, the weeds take the active role of the subject, “clinging on cliffs” through their own agency (Line 5). While the cliffs may not be as nutrient-rich as the dirt, the weeds still grow tall, and the speaker likens their vantage point to that of “an eagle,” a common symbol of freedom and independence (Line 5). The speaker clarifies this freedom in the final stanza, where the weeds are “stand[ing] alone, strong and free” (Line 21).

The speaker further develops the extended metaphor in the third stanza by imagining that they are a weed. Opposed to flowers, weeds have the ability to break “through the surface of stone, / to live, to feel exposed to the madness / of the vast, eternal sky” (Lines 7-8). While the first stanza describes flowers “harnessed” to pots, weeds can break through stone and expose themselves to the world. They do not need to be “watered, fed, guarded” like the flowers, but are instead self-sufficient (Line 2). The speaker also establishes that weeds are stronger, more independent than flowers, and, as a result, better-equipped to experience the beauty and the dangers of the world. The speaker then imagines the weeds’ “soul” and “seed” being carried “beyond the mountains of time or into the abyss of the bizarre” (Lines 11-12) by the “breezes of an ancient sea” (Line 10). The repetition of the construction “my soul, my seed,” as well as the alteration of the two nouns, signifies that the speaker thinks souls and seeds are interchangeable. This conflation of soul and seed means that in the extended metaphor, the weeds’ exposure to the elements results in it spreading and propagating, both physically (seed) and intellectually (soul).

Despite the benefits of being a weed, the speaker acknowledges that living freely and independently could result in being “shunned by everyone” (Line 14). The weeds, for example, are not only strong and independent but gross and unappealing. They look “ugly” and “smell of musty, green stench” (Lines 4, 19), while the flowers are “pleasant-smelling” (Line 15). The weeds, therefore, are outcasts. But to be “pleasant-smelling” is not to be unique, only inoffensive. The weeds may have an offensive odor to them, but that odor is so original that it needs a new term, “green stench” (Line 19), to describe it. The smell is original and therefore difficult to pin down, compared to the “fragrant lilac” that the flowers emit (Line 20). This originality along with the earlier image of the “seed” being carried “beyond the mountains of time” (Lines 11-12) also suggests that weeds are not only original but creative.

The poem’s speaker employs anaphora, or the repetition of opening phrases, four times in the poem to state they would “rather” be a weed than a flower (Lines 4, 13, 19, 22). This anaphora not only restates the speaker’s preference for being a weed, but it shows that the speaker sees being a weed or a flower as a choice. While the speaker is aware that they are different from other people, and though the speaker expresses a desire to live away from larger society through their preference for weeds over flowers, they do not believe that people are stuck being one or the other like the actual plants are. Rather, they suggest that people can choose to be either flowers or weeds, either dependent and limited or independent and free. The connection between weeds and freedom is made explicit not only in the final two lines of the poem, but through the slant rhyming of “free” and “weed.” Since this is one of the few rhyming couplets in the poem, the connection between the two words appears even more explicit.