Explain how both poems address the theme that personal identity can have many layers. Use details from both poems in your response. "Escape"

By Theresa Hossfeld

I look inside me and I don’t see it

I don’t see the power

The confidence you say I have

You say I can do anything

That I’m sure of myself and my intentions

And I wonder

But I don’t know

If it’s all there

Waiting for the opportunity

to jump into you

And try to help you

Fix you

Ask you

Why? Because I don’t know

I wait anxiously

Feeling my stomach

A block of ice

Chipping away, melting

then freezing up again

Who can I follow?

Cuz I don’t want to lead

I ask myself every question

There are temporary answers

But I know more

Like everybody seems to know more

And I still don’t know how

Cuz it’s nice to ignore confrontation

Avoid conflict

Watch my rainbow

And let you watch yours

But the universe knows more

I must take this test just like everyone

Takes tests

I am closing in on the sky

Hoping it will try to escape

And I know I will let it get away

Like I let a lot of things get away

Cuz then I won’t have to continue the

search

"For my power"

I sit in my

crunched-in

restraining

desk, they call it,

with my paper

and my pen

and I am

supposed to see

the blackboard

around the tall boy

en frente de mi

and my mind on my

text and my pen on

the page I am

supposed to

for me

para mi futuro.

but my head

won’t translate

this language

log base b of a squared

carbon monoxide

reacting with phosphorus

I don’t react

I see through the paper

and my pen writes

poetic equations

my mind plus my life

equals

something beyond this.

doodles litter my

notebook like snowflakes

dancing through the trees

beyond the window

the lined paper

lines with soul

forgetting cosines

life without phosphorus

and my life

mi futuro

beyond desk-chairs

And dull muraled halls

j. v., varsity and

setting the curve

school play and G. P.A.

textbooks

learning without

knowing

without room

to learn how

to know myself

to be myself

trial and error

minus lab write-up

feeling without

a thesis

learning youth

mi futuro

learning how to live

without a textbook

without a teacher to

correct grammar

to live to learn myself

to live to know myself

to live to be somebody

who’s learned how

to live