Disastrous drafts
 

I've been doing a deep organization of my writing files lately, and came across this gem (aptly buried in my "unredeemable disasters" folder). Behold the unbounding majesty of my first attempt at a sonnet:

Unfocussed Sonnet

The passing moments take me by surprise:
Each second comes and suddenly is gone,
Then comes and goes the next, and time flows on,
And every minute flees before my eyes.
Here in this passing we are too soon spent.
Each passing hour touches eternity,
And never will return again—but we
Become subsumed in how to pay the rent.
The sonnet form is harder than you think!
When halfway through without a conclusion
The poet's thoughts all turn to confusion
(Though she may take some solace in pink ink).
The last couplet is the grand finale:
In theory, it is a hot tamale!

Oh, Christine, for once it seems appropriate to say, with a solemn face, "thank you for sharing that. It was very brave."

However, it's not that "bad" and it amused me greatly. May I suggest you start a new folder "Possible Competition Entries" and keep it there to await the right opportunity to loose it on the world. It might scrub up quite well in that capacity (and if you're worried about your reputation you can always use a pseudonym). You are among repeat offenders in this forum. Welcome to it.

And meanwhile, do we not all have juvenilia that now give us that existential shudder? May I adapt the "Rawhide" theme to my purpose and urge you: "Look 'em out, put 'em up!"

Ha! Don't worry; it takes a lot more than something like this to embarrass me :P

I also like this better than you do, Christine. The sestet as taking-up-slack is clever, and its metrical confusion is very expressive. I agree with Ann: don’t give up on it.

Carl

Christine, you start the best threads.

I, like Ann and Carl, think you could rework this if you wanted to. It's very much not a disaster, at all. It's funny and light/serious and the pink ink is wonderful!

My best ‘first’ poem I wrote when I was about eight (carefully, with fountain pen). I don’t think I have a whole copy as there were mice in the house, but it was a sonnet about Tate & Lyle’s Golden Syrup.

I can remember the first and last line - the first was ‘The golden tin sits neatly on the shelf’ and the last was ‘the Lion loses his Kitchen Glory’. In between was a great deal of writing about how nice golden syrup tasted when scooped from a tin with a sly finger, and bluebottles.

(For context, here’s a Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup tin).

The second awful sonnet, written about ten years later, was about negative space, and was much worse. I probably have a copy of that somewhere that I’ll try to dig out. But I didn’t try to write any further sonnets post-negative-space sonnet until I joined here, for which the world should heave a sigh of relief.

Sarah-Jane

So you wrote advertising copy too? I did very briefly for TV. Then did other things that might have been the wurst mistake of my life. On the other hand, I dated a copywriter briefly, later, who disliked her source of income mightily I don't think TV copy writing would have been wurser in the long run.

Christine, that first remark of mine wasn't actually serious - it was written with a wink and a grin. I thought, as Sarah Jane does, that we have the beginning of a really good thread here.

I hope we get some more contributions. I'm hunting down some of mine.

I hope we do too, Ann! And Sarah-Jane, your comment reminded me of the first poem I wrote, which was part of a poetry unit in school when I was nine. I thought it was so wonderful that I memorized it, and amazingly, it has stuck with me:

REMEMBRANCE DAY

Remembrance Day
It's Remembrance Day
Thinking of the dead
Who died for Canada
Fighting for peace
Now they are gone
Maybe for a short time
Maybe for long
They are dead, dead, dead
They have gone to sleep in their earthly bed
It makes me sad
It makes me mad
I can't do anything
Too bad

(This makes me howl. They're DEAD, get it??! So super-super dead. And the weary resignation in the last two lines... all I can say is that I wrote them with absolute sincerity.)

Carl, if I could take credit for the sonnet's "very expressive" metrical confusion I would do so; I'm afraid the truth is that I was simply metrically confused!

Ah, so we're posting our first poems. Here's my very first, from when I was about 13. I read Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came at the end of King's Dark Tower series and decided I wanted to do that. The result is too long, so I shall only subject you to the first 12 lines for now. Of course, I had no understanding of metre, and barely any understanding of general writing skills.

Rose Red

1
My first thought was upon the dreadful melancholy
That seemed to shroud the glassy glade of grass;
That even as I reached, with the burning arm of sight, into its heart, revealed its emerald farce;
And told me with its booming voice of dark, that to believe its beauty would be the oldest of all folly.

2
So I ran here and there away from that brittle golden black house—
I knew it was just a hollow waste land,
In a tortured disguise, of ropey bloody sand—
And took a hose to the fear-waters to douse.

3
And trying to forget the sunken shadow plains of night
I took my mind back a hundred thousand leagues, to a happy seed:
Where friend's were close and tales were taken heed.
But an evil presence lurked even then, and memories are a terrible blight.

Truly a thing of beauty. I doff my hat to you, good sir.

I can't tell if that's a promise, or a threat.