Remembering Rich, remembering Hughes, remembering Heaney, remembering O’Hara, ask yourself, with respect to any identity-poem, “Between what borders, left and right, does this poem flow? What does it see when it looks up? or down? or around? Which words shine with morality? Which redden with shame? How does it see the past? the present? In what communities does it station itself? Against what others does it contend? To what degree does it specify its own uniqueness?” The rich contribution of identity formation to poetry, especially in the twentieth century, both criticizes and renews our inherited sense of the lyric speaker, reminding us that if we stand in the shoes of the poem, we do so not only in general ways but also in our own individualized way.