The First Last Unicorn (A Poem)

By Joyce Jacobo

[Author’s Note: Dedicated to Peter S. Beagle. This poem is based on an account I heard of his writing process for The Last Unicorn, which is a shining example of the different turns a story can take on the road to its completion.]

A lesson known very well

    by Peter S. Beagle

is how much work from a writer

    can go unused

like pieces of stitched cloth

    laid aside for other projects

I heard that he began to pen a fantasy

    and wrote more than 40 pages

of a narrative that concerned a unicorn

    in the contemporary world

She was indeed on a quest

    but among a land of highways and cities

                    and even dragon police officers

It was a great deal of effort to take

                                   but regardless

      the whole thing

         seemed to fall apart

                             into a jumble

     that Beagle struggled to straighten

At least until he realized that this mess

       had sparked a whole tangle of ideas

There were characters he wanted to explore

       and themes that had occurred to him

So Beagle restarted the journey of the unicorn

     located in a fantasy world he had crafted

in which a unicorn searched for her people

      and encountered a fiery red bull

Without the fragmented draft

      that Beagle had written before

Another beautiful story

      may have gone unborn