The Sound of Music

Golden Shovel Poetry is a style of verse created by Terrance Hayes. This form of found poetry allows the writer to take a favorite poem and use it to make something original. I experimented with found poetry last year when I wrote Blank Verse poems. Since I have a small booklet of William Blake poems on my shelf that I’ve planned to reread, I decided to start the month of July playing with the words written by this Romantic Era poet. Blake didn’t receive much recognition in his life. Some people thought he was insane. I will call this first poem The Sound of Music.

The rules for writing a Golden Shovel Poem and The Sound of Music

While researching this style of poetry created by Terrance Hayes, there seem to be four simple rules. You can use as many lines of the poem as you want, and the poem will end with you being your creation. I find this idea interesting. Written below are the three simple rules.

1). Choose a poem that you like. I will use poems by William Blake in my July poetic adventure.

2)Use each word in the line or lines as the end word in your poem. Make sure they stay in order.

3) Construct an entire poem around them. The meaning doesn’t have to be the same.

4) Give the original poet credit who wrote the line or lines you used.

In this poetic adventure, I will stick to using poems written by William Blake. This small poem I call The Sound of Music will consist of the end of lines taken from Blake’s Auguries of Innocence.

The Sound of Music

It is hard to tell a
Difference between a Robin
Clothed in the sunrise of Red
Thrill song emitted from her breast
And a symphony in
A concert hall or a
Soprano singing in a Cage

It is the listen who puts
Meaning to it all
The music rising to Heaven
Notes filled with beauty in
The thick, trembling throat of a
Bird or instrument filled with rage.

There is a difference between a
Trumpet and a dove
That echoes in a quiet house
Where musical notes once fill’d
The rooms with
The voices of doves
Who disappeared &
Now occupied with homing Pigeons

I listen with shutters
To the sound from Hell
That now flows thro’
My walls and all
That plagues us with its
Twisted torture in my neighborhood regions

 

Who is Molly Shea?

Molly Shea is an accomplished fictional short story writer from Indiana who writes short stories and novels about a fictional town called Tecumseh.  To read more of her short stories and adventures, click here.

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