This month’s writing prompts are all about opening lines, but I’m still on my terminal words kick. Tritinas, diminishing poems, what’s an editor in need of a poetry slam to do?
Our September poetry slam takes a page out of Terrance Hayes’ book – literally, by using the form he used in his poem The Golden Shovel. To write a Golden Shovel-style poem, the first thing you need is a line of poetry. I bet you can think of a line of poetry, but if you can’t, I’ll leave a list of resources at the end of this post, or you can use our Prompt Up fiction prompt opening line!
Let’s dig into this form together.
What’s a Golden Shovel?
The literal answer is, a pool hall in a Gwendolyn Brooks poem. Or it’s the first poem of the style we’re exploring this month, not coincidentally named The Golden Shovel.
To write a Golden Shovel (I’m capitalizing to make it stand out from the text, but you don’t have to; it’s not a proper noun unless it’s the name of the poem) you simply disassemble an existing line (or more) of poetry and make each word, in order, the last word in each line of your poem. So if you disassemble a six-word line, you end up with a six-line poem. If the line contained 15 words, you’d have a 15-line poem. Feel free to break your poem up into any stanzas that make sense to you, though; it doesn’t have to be one solid block of text.
And don’t forget to credit the original author of the line!
Let’s see what that looks like by reading the original Golden Shovel.
First, the Brooks poem.
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Now let’s look at what Brooks did with We Real Cool. Notice how he took almost the full text of the poem? Twice? That’s fine. You can do that, too. Or you can focus on a single line or lines. Remember – don’t boldface the “prompt” words in your work; your poem should stand on its own without having to yell about the prompt you used.
(For extra cool poet points, think about the very different structure of the two sections of the poem and the way they interface with the prompt words. Do you prefer one or the other? How can you use one of these ideas?)
I. 1981
When I am so small Da’s sock covers my arm, we
cruise at twilight until we find the place the real
men lean, bloodshot and translucent with cool.
His smile is a gold-plated incantation as we
drift by women on bar stools, with nothing left
in them but approachlessness. This is a school
I do not know yet. But the cue sticks mean we
are rubbed by light, smooth as wood, the lurk
of smoke thinned to song. We won’t be out late.
Standing in the middle of the street last night we
watched the moonlit lawns and a neighbor strike
his son in the face. A shadow knocked straight
Da promised to leave me everything: the shovel we
used to bury the dog, the words he loved to sing
his rusted pistol, his squeaky Bible, his sin.
The boy’s sneakers were light on the road. We
watched him run to us looking wounded and thin.
He’d been caught lying or drinking his father’s gin.
He’d been defending his ma, trying to be a man. We
stood in the road, and my father talked about jazz,
how sometimes a tune is born of outrage. By June
the boy would be locked upstate. That night we
got down on our knees in my room. If I should die
before I wake. Da said to me, it will be too soon.
II. 1991
Into the tented city we go, we-
akened by the fire’s ethereal
afterglow. Born lost and cool-
er than heartache. What we
know is what we know. The left
hand severed and school-
ed by cleverness. A plate of we-
ekdays cooking. The hour lurk-
ing in the afterglow. A late-
night chant. Into the city we
go. Close your eyes and strike
a blow. Light can be straight-
ened by its shadow. What we
break is what we hold. A sing-
ular blue note. An outcry sin-
ged exiting the throat. We
push until we thin, thin-
king we won’t creep back again.
While God licks his kin, we
sing until our blood is jazz,
we swing from June to June.
We sweat to keep from we-
eping. Groomed on a die-
t of hunger, we end too soon.
That’s all there is to it
Just take a line or lines from an existing poem and use them as the last words in the lines of your poem. Sounds simple, right? It’s a little harder than it looks, though, so remember to take your time and don’t just write from word to word – have an image or idea in your head as you compose your poem. I like to take the words and write them vertically down the page, moving from line to line, so that I don’t accidentally skip one and I have all my words available.
When you submit your poem, it’s nice to either at the end or beginning include “From a line in (poem) by (author)” and put a link in so that your reader can see the original line in context.
But I promised you some resources for poetry, so here you go:
Contemporary American Poetry Archive
Full texts of out-of-print volumes of contemporary poetry.
The Poetry Foundation
Poems, poet biographies, interviews, recordings, and essays.
Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature
Medieval, Renaissance, 17th-century, and Restoration poets. Poems, biographies, and critical essays.
Poetry Daily
Anthology features one new contemporary poem each day, selected from current journals and books. Includes an archive of past selections.
Cave Canem Foundation
A home for the many voices of African American poetry, committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets.
About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
