total number of poems

[ericalauren]

How many poems have you written in your life? It can be for school, for fun, anything. I’ve written approximately 450 poems so far. Obviously, I need to write more.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

No effin' idea. There is a folder around here somewhere with all manner of stuff in it. And I found two fragments yesterday. Really, no telling. A couple hundred, maybe.


Making more . . . .

 

[butters]

i don't know

wrote my first (and published) piece around 9 years-old, wrote more in my teens and twenties, then wrote tons from the age of 40. i'm 65 now. published pieces? maybe around 50 in print, plenty of others online at various poetry sites and zines... never kept a good account but have started more recently trying to catalogue them but still fall short. How many poems one has published DOES NOT quantify how good one is as a poet. Quality over quantity is definitely something to aim for.

i can't even go back and find a lot of them since they got lost on a fritzed computer hard drive, so i try and make sure i keep a repository now... mostly here and maybe some back in my ancient emails where i mailed myself a bunch to keep them somewhere online, but i'd have to hunt back years for them and i don't think they're even under my current email address so pretty much gone with the wind.

if you don't want to see yourselves in a similar position, make sure you keep copies online to access even if your pc/phone messes up and even then, probably keep hard copies in case a site/online repository goes offline.

now i could only take my own advice

 

[Angeline]

Hundreds, maybe even 1000+. I've been writing poetry since I was a kid but I didn't get serious about it until the mid 1990s and then started to write in earnest. For at least ten years I wrote almost daily and I have stuff published online, in print and here at Lit under a few different names. But like others here I'm not great at record keeping. If I think something is really good I keep it (now in a Cloud file). I've lost stuff over the years though, mostly due to computer hard drive death or during moves.

 

[Angeline]

I have my first book of poems in a butterfly journal I think I started writing when I was in 5th grade and they were sooo bad. But that's when I first caught the poem bug

I wrote lyrics for a song a high school boyfriend put to music and played with his band. The lyrics make me wince when I think of them now. But everyone has to start somewhere!

 

[ericalauren]

I wrote lyrics for a song a high school boyfriend put to music and played with his band. The lyrics make me wince when I think of them now. But everyone has to start somewhere!

I can relate! I read my high school poetry and I wonder how my creative writing seminar teacher praised me so much. Maybe she saw the future potential in my work? Because my teenage poetry was mostly terrible.

 

[bill4672a]

I don't know. I have about a dozen poems published in various literary ezines, a few in print publications, along with a few published essays/editorials and a short story. Most of the ones I wrote when I was in my teens and twenties are lost along with aborted short stories and novels. In grad school, I was more of a fiction writer. I have a handful of unpublished short stories and the same on essays. I've written the equivalent of two academic textbooks, neither published formally.

I go through periods when I am writing a lot and then dry spells (where I am now) when I can't seem to do much of anything. Especially during the dry spells, I read although, lately, even that has been difficult--not sure why. Doldrums and becalmed

I tried my hand at writing erotica, with a couple of things posted in Literotica, but I was never satisfied with the results.

 

[Bigtitsbitch1000x]

How many poems have you written in your life? It can be for school, for fun, anything. I’ve written approximately 450 poems so far. Obviously, I need to write more.

I have written about 200 poems in my career as an author. Many were published.

In my experience serious poetic output is more difficult than any other literary form, especially in degenerate America where the graffiti of someone like Bukowski is taken seriously and the verse of Robert Duncan is unknown.

The struggle for poetry is a revolutionary one. Poems are not trash cans. Poetry is not a variation on standup comedy. "Poetry must be made by all, not by one." -- Lautréamont.

( O )( O )

 

[Bigtitsbitch1000x]

Let me add that I was saved from high school expulsion by publication of one of my poems opposite the last published poem of Langston Hughes.

( O )( O )

 

[butters]

 

[Bigtitsbitch1000x]

Got something to say in human language? I speak 10, six fluently, but Emoji isn't among them.

( O )( O )

 

[Bigtitsbitch1000x]

Hundreds, maybe even 1000+. I've been writing poetry since I was a kid but I didn't get serious about it until the mid 1990s and then started to write in earnest. For at least ten years I wrote almost daily and I have stuff published online, in print and here at Lit under a few different names. But like others here I'm not great at record keeping. If I think something is really good I keep it (now in a Cloud file). I've lost stuff over the years though, mostly due to computer hard drive death or during moves.

Who are the poets that most influenced you? From any language tradition. E.g. Han Shan, Whitman, García Lorca?

( O )( O )

 

[Angeline]

Who are the poets that most influenced you? From any language tradition. E.g. Han Shan, Whitman, García Lorca?

( O )( O )

Hmmm. The poets I love and read over and over include Yeats, Forugh Farrokhzad, Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan, Yusef Komunyakaa, Adrienne Rich. And though he's not known as a poet I love Chaim Potok. His writing projects warmth and kindness to me and that has been an influence.

Thank you for asking.

 

[ZfrkS62]

Several back in high school for creative writing, may have gotten one published around 2000. I don't know, never heard for sure.

Wrote countless poems for ever girl I dated.

Tried switching to lyrics, there are some random ones still physically existing in a notebook in my room.

I never had any idea if any of it was any good, but i don't think that's what drives poets, so I never really cared.

 

[Mrtenant]

Hundreds. No idea. My first of any relevance was in 8th grade when I hardly had any idea what I was doing. An rhyming 3 page epic poem based on The Pearl, by John Steinbeck.

After that, I got into a bad boy stage in highschool, where I was often fighting, drinking, racing cars, theft, and more. I got roped into a highschool creative writing class. I think I was trying to find an easy way through English. My teacher then Mrs. Cross, for some reason, saw something in me that she encouraged when everyone else around was sure I was a thug or criminal or both. I wrote a lot then. After high school, my life turned for the worse and I didn't pick it up again for decades until things settled down, I settled down, and started writing again shown here at Lit.

Thank you all for reading any of it. For your critique. And your encouragement. I have not been the most temperamental of writers at times but I am working on it. You are all appreciated more than you know.