In respect of a friendly author this morning asking a question of authors:

"If it was really Shelley who stood and listened to the skylark, it was not Shelley in any important sense; he did not mean for me, reading the poem, to be thinking about him listening to the bird; he was entirely willing to vanish, and to let me become the 'I'." — Mary Oliver
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Don't you think that modern authors are not willing to vanish--that they so desperately want to be part of the story. Yes? No? Maybe so?

I know I need to vanish more.

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And my response:

There are different flavors of 'I'. The I that I like is the one wears a mask. That I that wrote that is no longer this I. What mask was that? This I reads that I and wonders who that I was. Though this I that pops up here so insistently likes to play with micro-bursts where the I mimics and pretends to evoke real time communication... as you read this I am writing this but no, actually, I am driving now in my truck to the fish market but you cannot see that because I left this message for you at the time it is marked and now it is not me here speaking my I to your I. The modernist technique of removal of the I from the narrative context of the text is as inauthentic as to push the author's I into your face... but my you is not you as your I is more you than it is me. Then there are those narrators who are simply liars like a trickster. I am not actually in my truck going to the fish market.

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