Poetry
My first poem was written about the death of my mother who died in 1960 when I had just turned 17 and about the effect it had on the family, especially on my father. The poem was entitled, “Mom’s In A Cold, Cold Grave”, and got me hooked on poetry writing as a means of personal expression, commentary and storytelling.
At first I wrote in the traditional poetic form of strict rhyme and meter, but then gravitated to something close to blank verse, that had meter but little or no rhyming. Whenever a thought or emotion came to me, and no matter where I was - in the subway, on the street or wherever - I’d stop dead in my tracks and jot down some lines or take some notes. I was always stopping short and should have worn a sign that said, “Watch out for sudden stops.” I would then later use these jottings to draft a poem and edit it a number of times. Then on the weekends, in my best penmanship, I'd enter it into a series of “Books of Verses.”
After accumulating a number of these handwritten books over the years, I decided to put them into the computer which allowed for electronic archiving, printing and duplication and transmission. All poems were then subject to a long editing process, followed by finding the right self-publishing company to get them printed into a hard covered series of 17 volumes (shown in the above photo) which contained approximately 1,600 poems written from 1960 to 2015. I now had a series of book shelf, library quality volumes as well as electronic volumes.
A little information about theses and later volumes follows:
Volumes 1-14 contain the poems written between 1960 and 2014.
Volume 11 is dedicated to my wife Violeta.
The Volume 12 is dedicated to my daughter, Leandra and Volume 13 to my son, Kerry but the texts have not been posted on the site as they are private and personal to and for them.
Volume 15 is an Index Volume for all the poems in volumes 1-14 (i.e. 1960-2014).
Volume 16 is an Anthology of Poems in volumes 1-14 and presented herein in 2 parts.
Volume 17 is an annual addition of poems written in 2015 and made part of the 17 volume tan-colored set.
Volume 18 is a volume of poems written in 2016, and that starts a green colored set of annual additions.
Volume 19 is a special edition comprised of 102 selected poems written up through 2016 that represent, in my opinion, my better poems in terms of their combined poetic value and personal meaning to me.
Volumes 20 and on are annual additions of poems written in the years 2017 and after.
Volume 27 contains selected poems from 2017 to 2023.
Also, there are 2 index volumes that contain a complete list of poems and the books in which they can be found. One volume, covers 1960 to 2016; the other, covers poems written in 2017. For indexes of poems written in the years 2018 and on, please refer to the indexes in the respective poetry volumes themselves.
Reading Suggestion: Since there are so many volumes and poems I suggest that a reader might start by reading Volumes 19 and 27, "Selected Poems", which contains my personal choices of poems through 2023.
It is my hope that some of my poems will be appreciated for stories they tell and the emotions they stir.
