On the Run from "I" Poems

Emily Dickinson wrote at least 150 poems beginning with the first person singular pronoun "I," but lest we immediately assume she thought a great deal of herself, or always took herself seriously, we should look at the following example:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you---Nobody---Too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise---you know!

How dreary---to be---Somebody!
How public---like a Frog---
To tell one's name---the livelong June---
To an admiring Bog!

I want to change the last word to Blog. But what I really want to write about is something I think about at least three times a day --- not at regular intervals --- and sometimes I think about it more. Who is the poet behind the poem? Is there such an entity?

I should speak for myself in this blog-blurb (doesn't that sound ugly?), and stop saying "we" because I'm sure some of you are quite different from me. Here's what it is that bugs me: I write poetry "spoken" by a variety of personas, this is true. But I also write poetry from the point of view of an "I" that is at least approximately me. For example I just wrote one the other day, called "Multitasking"--- this is not precisely about me, it's kind of a spoof, and not all the "facts" are factual.

Is there a problem with "I" poetry because as the Buddhists say "I, me and mine" are illusions???

I wrote a poem about the problem of being an individual a few weeks ago.

Being Singular

A girl of ambiguous race in New York City
feels invisible,
eats chips and guacamole from a take-out place
in front of the TV.

The sun sets in Louisville,
thousands on cell phones, thousands on the Internet,
thousands flipping channels,
I with my headache, sadness
smoke on the front porch.
The little skinny stripy cat Kiwi
perches on the maple,
sniffs the vapor,
not the weight,
of being.

What is it to have one pair of eyes
one set of ears and one
brain? What does it mean to be one
and only one
network of arteries and veins
sitting in one
chair, hoping
the sky will not
fall?

Is there such a thing
as an eternal flame?
Years fly past like geese.
What came and went
just might not come again.

If "I, me, and mine" are an illusion, why do other people normally not
have a memory of the things that are "my" experiences?

I mean how do I differentiate between the brain I walk around with and the one you walk around with except by speaking of "mine" which contains "my" stuff, and "yours" which has been with you since your birth?

Can someone help me? I just don't understand the following statement,
by Jon Kabat-Zinn: "Awareness has no center and no periphery."
If I said I understood --- tempting as it is to say you understand things that reek of depth --- I would be lying. I may be spiritually wimpy but I
feel like there is a center to the entity I am, a point, a cursor, call it what you will --- a location, at least, around which all that I perceive is arranged.

Just because you write from "your own" point of view doesn't mean you're incredibly self-indulgent --- does it? I mean even when we write in the third person omniscient about characters who do not resemble us, we're still looking through the lens of our own perception ---right?

I'm acting like I'm worried about this. Actually I'm not. I've done a lot of experimenting with point of view --- you can tell yourself, if you're a white
American female in the 21st century that you're going to write from the p.o.v. of a male Sufi mystic in 1472, and the result will at least be interesting. Or you can write about the break-up of your love affair last week --- from the point of view of your ex-lover, or the p.o.v. of
your boss at work, who's SO glad you finally broke up with the jerk.

I guess I don't think that the "I" that is "central" to "me" is necessarily attached to anything of substance --- this is where I may agree with Kabat-Zinn. Yeah, there are a million elements that make up the microcosm that each one of us "is" --- elements that are more physical and biological, elements that are more "spiritual' if you believe in that ---
there is a list of so-called facts a mile long "attached" to each of us,
but aren't we also, at the same time, "Nobodies?" As much as we are
full, are we not at the same time empty?

To tell one's name---the livelong June
to an admiring---Blog?

---Harriet