Watered Down

Okay, Word Daddy is missing in action. He must be on another one of his cross-country road trips. I hope his motorcycle breaks down and leaves him stranded in Tucumcari. Sorry, I shouldn’t be mean. I decided to hang with the Golden Shovel Poems in October. What can I do with a missing muse and so many great poets in the world? I’ve used William Blake, Robert Frost, and Amy Lowell for inspiration in the past. He was an interesting man. He proposed to Maud Gonne four times, and she repeatedly turned him down all four times. When that didn’t work, Yeats proposed to her daughter. She also turned him down. Yeats was the first Irish person to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Therefore, this new poem will be titled Watered Down.

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 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. Now, I am having fun writing Golden Shovel Poetry.

The rules for writing a Golden Shovel Poem and Watered Down

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. Currently, I will use poems by William Butler Yeats.

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.

Yeats is a little darker at times. This is especially true for his poem The Second Coming. Yeats wrote it at the end of the carnage of World War I. The images he uses are dark and predict a dim future for humanity. I am conflicted about using this poem to create my own work, but I never like to back down from a challenge. I will title this poem Watered Down.

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Watered Down 

When I looked and saw the
Shimmering simple blood-dimmed
Signs tumbling on the tide
And wondered what is
The meaning of the evil loosed
On the whirling world and
Why weary people everywhere
Are caught in the snare and the
Political pomp and ceremony
The illustrious illusion of
Power to lose our innocence
Only to discover the truth is
Water down and drowned
 

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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