The Trick

Terrance Hayes invented the Golden Shovel style of poetry.  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. In the month of July, I focused on  William Blake’s poems. Blake and I are breaking up. I decided to switch things up a bit in August. I will continue to write Golden Shovel but move on to Robert Frost. Frost dropped out of college twice but earned more than 40 honorary degrees. That is the smart way to go to college, but he had to win four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry to accomplish the task. He read a poem at JFK’s presidential inauguration. Therefore, you have to admire a man who can accomplish the important things in life. I will call this poem The Trick.

The rules for writing a Golden Shovel Poem and The Trick

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 currently I will use poems by Robert Frost.

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 use poems written by Robert Frost. This small poem I call The Trick . It will consist of the end of lines taken from Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

The Trick 
The master magician waved his wand, and he
Clouded your wisdom and bent you will
A powerful invader he was not
He only needed an illusion for us to see
Confusing both you and me
And conjure a story without stopping
Then leave us blindsided here

A spectacular vision for us to
Sit on the sidelines and watch
The tantalizing trick and the wave of his
Wand in the dark and dreary woods
Frozen until we get out fill
To distinquish down from up
And find ourselves surrounded with
A blanket of blinding unforgiving snow
 

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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