SEASCAPE

Earth Children turn their new eyes upward,
As the rain falls into outstreched arms.
The world moves with beauty beneath their bodies.
The frenzied sea crys upon the shore.

The dawn infant breathes its first crystal breath.
As nature sweet incense flows through time.
The cycle of birth has now turned once around,
and set into motion the cycle of life

Young mountain lovers quench their thirst for sunlight,
and wet their tongues in the forest land stream.
Then bathe neath the silver waters of the moon
Through the night star's great prism frolic their dreams.

Amid the towering comstolk forests the new ones scamper
They run to eat of lifes blessed grain
The deep crop of summer is ready for harvest.
and autumns' celebration has come again.

Page last updated: 19 Aug 2010

Info

SEASCAPE is a Bruce Springsteen poem that, along with a paragraph entitled MY LADY, was his first published writing. It was printed in the April 1969 edition of Seascape, the school literary magazine of Ocean County College. Note that the poem was erroneously attributed in print to "Bruce Sprengsteen".

The third stanza from SEASCAPE would show up slightly amended less than a year later in the Steel Mill number LADY WALKING DOWN BY THE RIVER.

The Publication

Seascape is the literary magazine of Ocean County College in Toms River, NJ, where Springsteen spent three semesters only in 1968. He enrolled in September and dropped out in December shortly after his parents moved to California. The January 1969 edition of the magazine contained Springsteen's first two published writings, a poem presumably entitled "Seascape" and a metaphorical paragraph entitled "My Lady". See SEASCAPE and MY LADY for more details.

Brucebase told SpringsteenLyrics.com, "We describe the publication from which the poems emanate as the school's Literary Yearbook, not the Student Yearbook. It is our understanding, from correspondence from an Ocean County College librarian, that the school published an annual Literary Yearbook and an annual Student Yearbook and that both are hard cover and hard spine - i.e. books."

Only a few issues of this publishing are known to exist. Most fans have seen Springsteen's writings in Seascape only under glass at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame And Museum in Cleveland. In June 2004, a copy was auctioned on Lelands.com, and a couple of years later an issue was donated to The Bruce Springsteen Special Collection at the Asbury Park Public Library, becoming the 3114th accepted item into the collection which is devoted to preserving the writing history and cultural legacy of Bruce Springsteen and members of the E Street Band.

Title

The "Seascape" title is not printed anywhere on the poem's page, nor appears in the poem lines, but was used by Lelands.com and was also given to Brucebase by the librarian at Ocean County College. Brucebase told SpringsteenLyrics, "Regarding the titles, this is a point we need (and will) further research. There is also some question/confusion as to the initial (first) publishing date of the Springsteen poems (Jan 69 or Apr 69) or whether there were in fact two slightly different print runs (or two entirely different publications) that included the Springsteen poems."

"It is our understanding the book/magazine is titled 'Seascapes'. We have one of the poems listed as 'Seascape' (singular). The title of both of the two poems 'Seascape' and 'My Lady' were provided to us by an Ocean County College librarian, prior to us seeing the photos of the poems. From what we can see there is clearly no title shown for one of the two poems. We don't know what would have motivated this Librarian (who is no longer there) to give us the title 'Seascape' while at the same time mentioning to us that the publication is called 'Seascapes'. Weird, because we questioned that very point 'Seascapes'/'Seascape' at the time with the Librarian. The only thing we can deduct is that there is some alternative publication of the poems with that title... or the librarian at Ocean County College made a mistake. If it turns out there is no title we'll definitely change it to 'untitled'. We won't make up any title."

Credits

Thanks Brucebase for the very valuable info.

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