Word Tally

I remember Larry asking, while drinking Scotch at his apartment months ago, which 6 words we used most often in our poetry. The idea being that maybe we could use these to write a sestina---a form I'd always been intimidated by. (Or was the question simply: if you were to write a sestina right now, what 6 words would you use?) Anyway, we listed words off the top of our heads. I think my list included: city, love, rain, fire, someone, and you.

For accuracy's sake (and because I wanted to get my mind off something last night), I decided to actually look at 37 of my more recent poems and count which words (excluding articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and personal pronouns) I used the most.

At the top of the list, surprisingly, was HAND/S (with a total of 18 hits). Funny, I never thought that body part/verb was that important to me.

The next 6 words:
(17) WORD/S
(16) STREET/S, STORY, OTHER/S
(14) CITY
(12) LOVE

And the rest:
(11) day/s, know, say/said
(10) end, read, see/saw
(9) someone, night, hear, friend/s, year/s, lose/lost
(8) name, road, time, way, live, look, change
(7) first, page, morning, rain, memory, true/truth, mind, find/found
(6) car, heart, map, write, sleep, photograph, picture, new, sign, leave, question

I'd like to think these choices reveal more than a limited vocabulary. =) If, as Galeano said, "we are are the words that tell who we are," what do these words tell about who I am and what my concerns are?