A Poetic Milestone

I've reached a poetic milestone as of this morning - 1,000 poems written.

That is just an estimate, though. A couple of years ago I began compiling in one site all the poems of mine that I could locate. I kept count, hence the 1,000. I know there are other poems I've written that I've forgotten, that were one-time creations sent to others, songs that I didn't include, and so on, so the actual number likely goes beyond 1,000. But I was able to locate and copy those 1,000 at this point, and that's the number I'm going with.

I don't say they are all good poems. Many were written for specific purposes or events, or were intended to be satirical or humorous or just plain silly. But in that thousand I would say 50 or so would be considered decent, maybe in a couple of cases even good (though not great- I'm a minor poet!). About 48 of my poems have been published (some of those in multiple places) in magazines, newspapers, or anthologies, so I guess that's a measure of alleged quality.

There are some of which I am actually proud.

The earliest poem I could find was written in middle school when I just 13:

A leaf
                                                 

A leaf tumbled
to the ground.
Don't ask me why;
it just did.

(As I said, I wrote it when I  was 13!)

 

The most recent was written just the other day -

 

plastic bag
in the tree startles the dog -
red sky in morning

 

Over the years I've experimented with free verse, sonnets, cinquains, haiku, scifaiku, clerihews, and limericks. The largest number are of the smaller forms - varieties of haiku, limericks, and clerihews. And most of the ones that have been published are of those short forms. Many of the poems are humorous, satirical, even sarcastic in nature. There's a dark edge to many - my slightly skewed view of reality. A number are religious in some way.

 

A thousand is a nice milestone, though certainly far fewer than many other poets have written. Some haiku poets, for example, have written thousands of poems. Emily Dickinson left behind some 1,800 poems. God knows how many Charles Bukowski churned out - they seem to keep finding notebooks long after he died. I'm sure there are many poets who have written thousands more poems than I have.

It's not a competition anyway.

As for me, onward. Maybe a scifaiku?

missionary frowns:

how to preach repentance to

sinless aliens?

Hmmm. 1,001?

Pax et bonum