A Third Thousand Petal Zen Lotus is the title I give to my short and very short poems. Each month I publish all the poems I have written for the month under the title Dr John WorldPeace JD Complete Poems Month Year.
Within this volume will be the Zen Petals. When I have 200 Petals I publish them. When I have a thousand petals I consolidate them into one volume.
This book will complete my A Third Thousand Petal Zen Lotus
NOTES ON THIS VOLUME
This volume of one-line poems (monostich) was published prior to my having a clear definition as to what the definition of a one-line poem consisted of. The first volume, A Thousand Petal Zen Lotus, has a limited definition.
In this volume, I expanded that definition such that the last half of this volume included poems that were really outside my original concept.
This volume was published as a free-standing volume but also with my supplement to my complete poems 1970 to 2019.
What I have done is to remove the poems that are not within my new definition of a One-Line poem. I have expanded and refined the monostich. So nothing is really set in stone at this point.
1) One-Line poems is a misnomer and should be One Sentence poems. But One-Line is more catchy than One Sentence.
2) What I have found is that the flow of a true One-Line poem could allow a sentence added to the first true sentence with the use of a colon or semi-colon. So the flow would be a One-Line poem but the truth is that it would be a two sentence poem. The poem should sound like a run-on sentence.
3) Some poems could have three sentences but with a comma, colon or semi-color could be manipulated into one sentence. The test is whether the 3 sentences have a flow with soft sentence ending as oppose to hard. A hard ending would show that the second sentence went off point from the first. What I have in mind is something more like a run-on sentence would be a One-Line poem. A run-on sentence would sound poetic.
4) Even if the flow of the poem is good as a run-on sentence there is a cosmetic limitation where the poem looks just too long.
4) If you have to stop and take a breath, the manipulated sentence is too long to be a One-Line poem.
5) Regarding all of my poems, I believe they are never finished. They can be overextended, but they are never finished. So as time goes on, I will systematically re-edit my poems until I die.
I do not feel committed to publishing any book as having a final final edit. I am not a perfectionist. It is only important to me that the reader gets the point, understand the poem. I reject long discussions of nuances of words. I like the idea of a poem having two different meanings. It promotes discussion and makes the reader think.
6) No one can read the poems in this book and not see that this is a new genre of poetry.
7) Due to the splitting the original book into two books, the Second One being Dr John WorldPeace JD, 2019 Supplement to the Complete Poems 1970 to 2019, This Second Thousand Lotus Petals does not have 1000 poems in it.. It may be the end of 2021 before that happens. When there is 1000 I will start a Third Volume.
I will publish my monthly Complete Poems with these One-Line poems in chronological order with all the other poems as if they were a selection of poems.
8) As a result of this recombining, there is no orderly numbering of the poems. I am keeping the original numbers so I will be able to track of the different places where the I collected these One-Line poems. I may put a number in front of each date and time designation in order to make the count for this volume correct.
