Queen of Mutable Selves

I am quoting Mr. Mueske today because I think he brought up good points below that did not get enough attention.

“I believe each poet wrestles with the amount of distance between the personal "I" and the inhabited "I". To complicate matters further, Joseph Brodsky often talked about the self as "a congress of selves" meaning, of course, that the self is mutable, too, and often takes up contradictory positions with itself base on context, emotion, distance, and other factors.”

I think I might be the queen to mutable selves but how does this apply to a body of work. How do we as writers take this self and make a book of poetry? One of the things I love about Kaminsky’s work is that he takes this self and makes it multidimensional. He brings in personal history, culture, other poets. It becomes a living, breathing thing.

When I write a poem that really works I always get this feeling that I can walk around it, that is becomes a sculpture, stand it on its head and it is still art. Unfortunately most poems tend remain flat on the page.