Form Friday
The golden shovel
As it is officially poetry month I thought I would bring Form Friday back and discuss some forms I never have. I will start with ‘The Golden Shovel’.
There are specific ways we pay homage to work that resonates with us or work that is made entirely of ghosts that haunt the halls of us. There is the after poem in which we write a response to a piece of writing, and this is also done sometimes when the concept of a title is fascinating. For example, Hanif Abdurraqib wrote Odes but took it further by elaborating on the title and adding an ending section. For instance, ‘Ode To Drake, Ending With Blood In A Field’. This led to an uprising of odes using the format. The other way we can honour a poem or poet is by writing a ‘Golden Shovel.’
What is a golden shovel?
The golden shovel was invented in 1981 by a man named Terrance Hayes. The ‘golden shovel’ takes a quote from a poem and then builds a new poem based on it. Each word from the quote is used as the final word of a line. If the quote was ‘God went home’, then you might produce something like:
spoke to God
off he went
searching for home
Terrance originally wrote The Golden Shovel using the entire poem ‘We Real Cool’ by 'Gwendolyn Brooks’, and the form was designed to celebrate her work with other authors following suit and creating golden shovels on other Gwendolyn poems, however, as all things do, the form evolved. There is no rule on how long the quote has to be, and the quote doesn’t even have to be from poetry. There are countless examples of people using lyrics or even news headlines to create poetry with a similar message or idea.
How to prepare to write a golden shovel
The first step is deciding if you want to go the ‘traditional’ route and write a golden shovel based on a Gwendolyn Brooks poem or do an ‘evolved’ version on a different medium. Once you have decided on this, start by collecting some quotes you enjoy varying in length. As stated earlier, you can write whole poems if you desire, but these tend to be trickier. Once you have your collection of quotes now you can start writing.
How to write a golden shovel
Unfortunately, there isn’t a special trick to writing these. This is a form that requires trial and error to establish which way a specific writer prefers creating them. One way is to write the quote vertically and attempt to write the lines that way. You can also take the word that ends the line, write multiples, and choose your favourite. This can be a time-consuming form, but the result is worth it. The Golden Shovel, to me, has the traits of a puzzle where you have to move pieces around until they fit perfectly. Another way to write these is to start with a simplified version, then build on top of it and make it better. One of my favourite poetry quotes is by Anis Mojgani, where he says, ‘You make me feel like honey and trombones’. If I were to create a Golden Shovel based on this, then I would start with the idea that I want it to be a love poem and create a simplified version. For example:
I love you
and the love we make
and the way you love me
and I love how you make me feel.
I am trying to tell you what it’s like
to have a heart turned into honey,
with all of your thoughts buzzing like bees and
a stomach turned into a sea of trombones.
I like this version of the poem, and the imagery of bees with the honey works out well, but the ending of the trombones feels out of place. As line seven also includes the word ‘like,’ I could make that line five with a slight alteration.
All of my thoughts dance like
bees turning my heart into honey
I altered the word buzz to become dance because later in the poem, the buzzing sounds celebratory and associates it back to marching bands with a heavy focus on the trombone. In summary, these take some time to assemble. If you must skip over a word and return to it, that is okay. Whichever way works best with your brain is the one you have to follow. Get out of the mindset of ‘I’m doing it wrong’ or ‘I can’t do this’ because you can, but it might take some time and figuring out. These are fun to do, so have fun with them. Don’t worry about quality or whether you are doing them right; just finish a draft and edit it later! Share what you make; I would love to see them and share them around.
Examples of the golden shovel
The Artist by Raymond Antrobus
after Gwendolyn Brooks’ ‘Gay Chaps at the Bar’
There are good reasons to tweezer each
word that you give a body
to pronounce your stance on what has
carried your cells with its
language of what you might call living for art.
By Rudy Fransisco