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And one day... there it was (I found my first two sonnets)
Thursday, 29 December 2016 12:32Yesterday, on FB, I vaguely alluded to going off to search for two small (but important-to-me) pieces of my past. Back in high school, I wrote a pair of sonnets that one of my teachers managed to finagle the Bowie Blade into publishing. I've since (I thought) lost any copies of them. Having had no luck at the Bowie Library or the Blade itself. I finally found microfilm copies of the paper at the Hyattsville library! I spent four hours yesterday staring and scrolling, but to no avail. See, I wasn't quite sure what *year* this happened, so I just started in summer of 1977 and went until I had to stop (in 1979 somewhere) for dinner.
BUT- when I got home, on a hunch, I started pawing through my box of paper mementos from the period (again- previous efforts failed) and I actually found the very first issue of Bowie High's literary magazine (to which I and several friends JUMPED at the chance to contribute), and there, among other fond memories, I found them: my first two actual sonnets!
So here, for Throwback Thursday- a glimpse of 17 year old proto-me trying his hand at a sophisticated poetry form:
Dusk
Steve Haug
Reflected into many forms of light
By dust and clouds that hover near the sea
The suns sets now with many colours bright
And signals brilliantly the night to be
The "outside" of the dome was bathed in red
The colours of the dusk that did abound
Were hidden from the occupants by lead
That cased the city's shield all around
They left the surface long ago, 'tis told
To seek a refuge from the hostile land
That was destroyed back in the days of old
By foolish leaders with a heavy hand
Sunset which is such a visage fair
Is caused by the pollutants in the air
Spring(?)1980
A Trashy Poem
Steve Haug
Among the boundless void of time and space
There went a planet floating in the black
Whose atmosphere sustained no life or race
All things endowing life, the world did lack
Since life this barren world could not sustain
Another world then satisfied it's need
Gigantic ships were sent that did contain
The wastes of life on which they could not feed
And from this toxic garbage left behind
Ingredients of all organic sort
Combined there forming those of larger kind
Crude life forms did this world at last support
Evolving from some garbage long disowned
Now planet Earth has garbage of it's own
Spring(?) 1980
-------------------------------------------------------
And from this relic and others in that box, I've finally pieced together the timeline that I needed. I took a creative writing class in the Fall of '79. (where I wrote the first one, I think) Then in spring of1980, one of my previous English teachers agreed to sponsor the start of the magazine. I jumped on it along with several of my friends and some other kids from the school and we did it: the contributions, the layout, the editing, the printing etc. It was called "etc..." So it was in the Spring of 1980 that Mrs Pippin SURPRISE! made me a published author. I didn't know she had done this until my Dad noticed that my name was in the paper. I never really found out what motivated her to do this, or why the Blade saw fit to go along. In the couple of years' worth of paper I saw before this, I saw no evidence of this ever having happened before. I don't know if it's happened since.
So I think I'll still go and try and find that issue of the Bowie Blade and make a photocopy of the page. But the important part of this is that, despite having written dozens of sonnets lately, I really wanted to somehow salvage my first two.
Mischief Managed!
BUT- when I got home, on a hunch, I started pawing through my box of paper mementos from the period (again- previous efforts failed) and I actually found the very first issue of Bowie High's literary magazine (to which I and several friends JUMPED at the chance to contribute), and there, among other fond memories, I found them: my first two actual sonnets!
So here, for Throwback Thursday- a glimpse of 17 year old proto-me trying his hand at a sophisticated poetry form:
Dusk
Steve Haug
Reflected into many forms of light
By dust and clouds that hover near the sea
The suns sets now with many colours bright
And signals brilliantly the night to be
The "outside" of the dome was bathed in red
The colours of the dusk that did abound
Were hidden from the occupants by lead
That cased the city's shield all around
They left the surface long ago, 'tis told
To seek a refuge from the hostile land
That was destroyed back in the days of old
By foolish leaders with a heavy hand
Sunset which is such a visage fair
Is caused by the pollutants in the air
Spring(?)1980
A Trashy Poem
Steve Haug
Among the boundless void of time and space
There went a planet floating in the black
Whose atmosphere sustained no life or race
All things endowing life, the world did lack
Since life this barren world could not sustain
Another world then satisfied it's need
Gigantic ships were sent that did contain
The wastes of life on which they could not feed
And from this toxic garbage left behind
Ingredients of all organic sort
Combined there forming those of larger kind
Crude life forms did this world at last support
Evolving from some garbage long disowned
Now planet Earth has garbage of it's own
Spring(?) 1980
-------------------------------------------------------
And from this relic and others in that box, I've finally pieced together the timeline that I needed. I took a creative writing class in the Fall of '79. (where I wrote the first one, I think) Then in spring of1980, one of my previous English teachers agreed to sponsor the start of the magazine. I jumped on it along with several of my friends and some other kids from the school and we did it: the contributions, the layout, the editing, the printing etc. It was called "etc..." So it was in the Spring of 1980 that Mrs Pippin SURPRISE! made me a published author. I didn't know she had done this until my Dad noticed that my name was in the paper. I never really found out what motivated her to do this, or why the Blade saw fit to go along. In the couple of years' worth of paper I saw before this, I saw no evidence of this ever having happened before. I don't know if it's happened since.
So I think I'll still go and try and find that issue of the Bowie Blade and make a photocopy of the page. But the important part of this is that, despite having written dozens of sonnets lately, I really wanted to somehow salvage my first two.
Mischief Managed!
