Not my person, not my personal?

This morning, while riding down the hill, I was thinking about my Camargue poems. Actually, I was thinking about a friend of ours from France and how she might enjoy reading them and maybe, when I really think they're ready, I should just throw them up on my website and skip the whole submission/rejection cycle.

I thought, "No one will want to publish these."

And then I thought, "Why not?"

A block or two later, I thought I might have found an answer: Personal experience.

I'm writing about characters—other people who aren't even real—but they still need to contain something of my real personal experience, those deep down emotions that are central to who I am, who I've become.

What?

Fiction writers must do this all the time. I suspect that Peter has been doing it as he pounds out his novel.

Maybe it's part of that emotional arc. Or (I thought) maybe it's more like acting—specifically, method acting (specifically, the Stanislavsky method one hears, or used to hear, so much about).

Is this an integral part of writing any poem? Am I doing it already and don't realize it? Or have I been holding back, staying on the outside?

(Note: I was never a very good actress.)

I'm not sure. But if there's a flaw in these poems, I suspect this is at least a big part of it.

Do you ever feel like you're missing the personal depths?