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Fatimah Asghar - "Pluto Shits on the Universe"

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The self-portrait poem embodies many of the best aspects of the overall genre: imagery, authenticity, and a strong sense of personal voice. In addition to their poetic value, self-portrait poems can also have deep personal value, helping poets connect with themselves and enhance feelings of self-love-

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The self-portrait poem embodies many of the best aspects of the overall genre: imagery, authenticity, and a strong sense of personal voice. In addition to their poetic value, self-portrait poems can also have deep personal value, helping poets connect with themselves and enhance feelings of self-love-

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Self-portrait poems stand out as a common and inspiring poetic exercise. The self-portrait poem embodies many of the best aspects of the overall genre: imagery, authenticity, and a strong sense of personal voice . In addition to their poetic value, self-portrait poems can also have deep personal value, helping poets connect with themselves and enhance feelings of self-love . These four poems showcase the beauty and honesty of self-portrait poetry.

Polish poet Adam Zagajewski uses the self-portrait poem to explore the fascinating details of daily life, human connection with , and the value of close relationships. Above all, the poem celebrates the individual as part of a collective community. Zagajewski powerfully considers the role of personal responsibility in creating social change.

"I'm no longer young, but someone else is always older. / I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist, / and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars and houses / dissolve like sunny days. / Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me / and irony suddenly vanishes," writes Zagajewski.

"I love gazing at my wife's face. / Every Sunday I call my father. / Every other week I meet with friends, / thus proving my fidelity. / My country freed itself from one evil. I wish / another liberation would follow. / Could I help in this? I don't know."

Aging can intensely complicate relationships with the self and self-perception. In her poem "Self-Portrait," beloved and candid poet Mary Oliver pushes back against negative stereotypes of aging. Instead of falling into these familiar expectations, Oliver embraces joy, vibrancy, and sensuality at any age, boldly proclaiming that she has not lost her identity.

"Upward, old legs!" Oliver writes. "There are the roses, and there is the sea / shining like a song, like a body / I want to touch / though I'm not twenty / and won't be again but ah! seventy. And still / in love with life."

In "Self-Portrait as a Band Audition," award-winning poet Prince Bush uses the sound, energy, activity, and playfulness of music to color their depiction. By putting themselves in this new and creative setting, Bush reveals an important quality of self-portrait poetry-that the self manifests differently in various scenarios. This can serve as an imaginative writing prompt for poets: How does setting yourself in different landscapes and social situations enliven newfound facets of your personality?

"I was flat and sharp, burst a buccal nerve blowing / Toh too quick, tay two-towed, three-toed sloth, tee / Tortoise, chromatic scale step cicadas: unwittingly / Played monotonic; a periodical cloud climbing up earth, / Personal tymbal deep in the diaphragm, screaming steam," Bush describes.

Afaa Michael Weaver, a former National Endowment for the Arts fellow and Cave Canem faculty member, celebrates humanity's connection to nature in his poem "Self-Portrait." Specifically, Weaver uses nature as a lens through which to view the self, as well as the overall origin story of humanity.

"I see myself in the shadows of a leaf / compressed to the green blades growing / to a point like the shards of miles of mirrors / falling and cracking to perfect gardens," observes Weaver. ". . . To gather myself I will swim naked / in the wind, bending my blind elbows / in circles, stopping now to dance / like the cherubic gold on the ark, / and gather myself from the participles / of this excitement another structure, / one closely resembling the beginning."

For more self-portrait poems, check out this in-depth and diverse anthology that celebrates the form. To use self-portrait poetry to fuel your own writing, take on the self-portrait poem as a creative prompt. How would you portray yourself in writing?

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Poetry and the Self: 4 Vulnerable Self-Portrait Poems - Read Poetry

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Self-portrait poems stand out as a common and inspiring poetic exercise. The self-portrait poem embodies many of the best aspects of the overall genre: imagery, authenticity, and a strong sense of personal voice . In addition to their poetic value, self-portrait poems can also have deep personal value, helping poets connect with themselves and enhance feelings of self-love .

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Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.

As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront.

Realizing I hate the word "sip."

& say I'm tasting it. When I'm just bad at taking in liquid.

I'm no mango or tomato. I'm a rusty yawn in a rumored year. I'm an arctic attic.

Come amble & ampersand in the slippery polar clutter.

I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be.

I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed what's left of her hope on my brothers.

She wants them to gulp up the world, spit out solid degrees, responsible grandchildren ready to gobble.

They will be better than mangoes, my brothers.

Though I have trouble imagining what that could be.

Flying mangoes, perhaps. Flying mango-tomato hybrids. Beautiful sons.

Chen Chen, "Self-Portrait As So Much Potential" from When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities. Copyright © 2017 by Chen Chen. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Source: When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org, 2017)

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Self-Portrait as So Much Potential by Chen Chen | Poetry Foundation

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Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.

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1. Who are you?

2. If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?

3. If you could be any color, what color would you be?

4. If you could be any sound, what sound would you be?

5. What texture are you?

6. What movement is most like you?

7. If you could be any space (cupboard, canyon, church, etc.) what space would you be?

8. What object are you?

9. What do you want to be?

10. What are you not?

Go through your answers to the personality test. What words are similar to the words you remembered in other poems? Circle them.

Write a poetry self-portrait using the words that you have circled, that starts with the response you wrote that most surprised you. Your poem should present a true self-portrait, without any biographical information.

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She says, Your English is great! How long have you been in our country?
I say, Suck on a mango, bitch, since that's all you think I eat anyway. Mangoes

are what margins like me know everything about, right? Doesn't
a mango just win spelling bees and kiss white boys? Isn't a mango

a placeholder in a poem folded with burkas? But this one,
the one I'm going to slice and serve down her throat, is a mango

that remembers jungles jagged with insects, the river's darker thirst.
This mango was cut down by a scythe that beheads soldiers, mango

that taunts and suns itself into a hard-palmed fist only a few months
per year, fattens while blood stains green ponds. Why use a mango

to beat her perplexed? Why not a coconut? Because this "exotic" fruit
won't be cracked open to reveal whiteness to you. This mango

isn't alien just because of its gold-green bloodline. I know
I'm worth waiting for. I want to be kneaded for ripeness. Mango:

my own sunset-skinned heart waiting to be held and peeled, mango
I suck open with teeth. Tappai! This is the only way to eat a mango.

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Self-Portrait as Mango by Tarfia Faizullah

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She says, Your English is great! How long have you been in our country? / I say, Suck on a mango, bitch, since that's all you think I eat anyway. Mangoes / are what margins like me know everything about, right? Doesn't

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Write a poem from the POV that is a plant or something you relate closely to.

EXAMPLE SELF PORTRAIT AS:

Sheep

Horse

Sagebrush

Juniper tree

Juniper berry

Pinion tree

Pinion

Window cleaner

Weed about to get pulled Jewelry

Yoga mat