The Neighbor

It’s true, 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. I switched gears in August. Robert Frost is my new poet guy because he has a way with words. Therefore, this new poem will be titled The Neighbor.  

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.

The rules for writing a Golden Shovel Poem and The Neighbor

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 Neighbor The words at the end of the lines are taken from Robert Frost’s Mending Wall.

The Neighbor

Every time I think that he
Has stopped talking he only
Starts up again and says
Silly stuff, claiming it's all good
And all the barriers and fences
I construct for sanity’s sake, make
Him start again, which is never good
And I wish we weren’t neighbors.

I saw the first bird of spring
Sitting on the line, which is
The normal place for birds, and the
Boy aimed his slingshot, intending mischief
And  pulled it with all his might in
The direction of the bird and me
I stood silent and I
Froze in silent wonder

The thought struck me that if
The rock hit the bird and I
Then my neighbor has gossip he could
Peddle about and put
Words to my pain and a
Innocent death, such a trifling notion
A spectator sport for him to engage in
A splendid pleasure would be his
If that rock hit me square in the head

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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