The Mystery

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 The Mystery.

 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 The Mystery

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 The Mystery .

The Mystery 

These are tough times and
It’s hard to know what
To do with all the rough
Talk and the brutal beast
Of time that ticks off its
Second, minute, and hour
Until the end of time and come
Traveling up, down, and round
In a vicious circle to get at
The time that arrives last
It slinks and slouches
As it silently moves towards
A distant place called Bethlehem
With all of the promises to
Make the future be
Unpleasant as the day it was born

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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