My First Published Poem

[jthserra]

While visiting my father's house this week, he handed me a copy of the 1972 edition of Sabre Magazine, the literary magazine of Stephen D. Lee High School in Columbus, Mississippi. I worked as a staffer there my junior year and had one of my poems accepted. So here is my first published poem:

A Reminiscence

Looking back on it all,
Wondering
How could it have been
Wondering,
How it would have been,
Without me.

Looking back on it all,
Hoping
It could've been different.
Praying,
It would've been different,
Without me.

Looking back on it all,
Wondering
What have I done
Worth living.


To be honest, the pulitzer price committee overlooked me that year (and every year since), but I did win for 1st place essay that year. The essay titled "Our Decision or God's? was also published in the magazine.

I was selected to be Editor of the magazine for the 1973 school year (my senior year) but had to move to San Antonio, Texas where they had no literary magazine and I had to settle for getting my poems into the yearbook and school newspaper.

And to think they thought Mississippi was illiterate... I have evidence that two years after they finally desegregated the schools, the Sabre Literary Magazine was alive and good in Columbus, Mississippi. In fact, the 1972 edition was Volume 6, so it had been around for six years by then. New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly eat your heart out...


jim : )

 

[foehn]

Cool...

& very interesting. If I ever find mine (probably in an old box somewhere at some relative's house), I'll throw it out here. The high school in Carrolton had a little journal for creative writing, circa 1967. I probably read my poem about a thousand times after seeing it in (low-quality) print; but all I can remember is a couple of bad lines. Hmmm... maybe it only had a couple of lines...

'Ocean foam, ocean foam/ up and down the sea you roam...'

And my literary "career" has generally progressed in a downward spiral ever since.

I started to say "proceeded" but that's one of the words I can't spell...

 

[jthserra]

Re: Cool...

The high school in Carrolton had a little journal for creative writing, circa 1967. .

So Carrolton, Texas and Columbus, Mississippi, not places you would think of as literary lights and yet, the high schools had literary magazines. I attended four different high schools and only the one in Mississippi had a literary magazine. The high school my daughter attends and their crosstown rival don't have them... the yearbook is about as literary as you get. I was able to get one of my poems in the yearbook my senior year when attending Randolph AFB HS in San Antonio, but that was about it.

Judson in Converse, Texas had one back then. One school day I snuck a handful of my poems across the street from our school through the chain link fence that lined the perimeter of the AF Base. My best friend had a girlfriend who went to Judson and I snuck my poems to her in the hopes they'd be accepted. Sadly, they took only work from their own school.

jim : )

 

[WickedEve]

New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly eat your heart out...


jim : )

Jim dear, may I rip your poem out of the Sabre Magazine. I tire of pinsky in the New Yorker, and I think my doctor is getting wise to my ripping.

 

[jthserra]

Re: Re: My First Published Poem

Jim dear, may I rip your poem out of the Sabre Magazine. I tire of pinsky in the New Yorker, and I think my doctor is getting wise to my ripping.

Tear my book??? Hey, I ain't your doctor... but hmmm... if you let me play doctor, well maybe.


jim : )

 

[WickedEve]

Re: Re: Re: My First Published Poem

Tear my book??? Hey, I ain't your doctor... but hmmm... if you let me play doctor, well maybe.


jim : )

Hmm... you could fix up your bedroom like a waiting room, and have lots of poetry magazines around... Kinky, but it has possibilities. Oh, I know what would turn me on! Print out all my poems and glue them insides a few new yorker mags! Yes! Yes, Jim, yes!

 

[princess rayann]

that's fun, when you go back and read pieces you wrote a long time ago. i like doing that too. my first poem ever published was for a poetry contest i won when i was 14. it was with The National Library of Poetry and they put my poem in the anthology and also because it rhymed they had someone read the poem out loud and they put background music on and my poem is part of a relaxation tape now too. hehe. i still think that poem is one of the cutest poems i've ever written.

 

[twelveoone]

Re: Re: Re: Re: My First Published Poem

Hmm... you could fix up your bedroom like a waiting room, and have lots of poetry magazines around... Kinky, but it has possibilities. Oh, I know what would turn me on! Print out all my poems and glue them insides a few new yorker mags! Yes! Yes, Jim, yes!

I glue them in my graphic novels.

 

[sandspike]

nice poem jth.

I like that poem. Nice little beat and I loved the form. I'm
afraid it was a little too deep for me when I was that age. I
hardly think about such things even today. My school had a paper
and sometimes a mag. I would stand side by the smoking tree
and wait for 'paper boys' to beat up. There were a couple of
cool girls on the paper, I dated one once. I now wish I had
studied harder, it must be nice having the book smarts. Thanks
for throwing 'Reminiscence' out here. If I ever meet you can
hit me on the shoulder as hard as you can. Get even for the
educated guys who never walked by the smoking tree again.

 

[jthserra]

Re: Re: Re: Re: My First Published Poem

Oh, I know what would turn me on! Print out all my poems and glue them insides a few new yorker mags! Yes! Yes, Jim, yes!

OOOOooo... and I could call you Dorothy (Parker) and we could read them to each other... while you wore glasses... cause I certainly would make passes then....


jim : )

 

[jthserra]

Re: nice poem jth.

I would stand side by the smoking tree
and wait for 'paper boys' to beat up. There were a couple of
cool girls on the paper, I dated one once. I now wish I had
studied harder, it must be nice having the book smarts.

Well, I was trying to shed a jock image, I quit the football team and although I was captain of the tennis team, I really wished the school had a class poet, that was something I would have aspired to. I was bigger than most of the football players, so getting beat up was not a real threat to me, getting mistaken for a dumb jock was my biggest fear.

Thanks for the comments on the poem... for being so long ago, it still was pretty bad.

jim : )