This morning I learned of a new poetic form (well, new to me) called the golden shovel. The rules are simple: take a line of poetry from someone else and make each word the last word of a line in your new poem. If the line has six words, the new poem will have six lines… and so on.
At first, it seemed kinda cool – like it delivers a poem and then it delivers a little added something because when you’re done reading the poem, you can read each last word and get an extra line. My next thought was, “and wow, using this form, I wouldn’t have to worry about where the line breaks are – they’re predetermined.” I often struggle with where to place my line breaks. I’ll write a poem out in paragraph form and then copy it a few times so that I can play with where where my ear hears the pauses and where I want to force a pause for effect. I started to think about how to actually compose this type of a poem – could I find the words within my paragraph form? I like the idea that someone else’s line might already exist in my poem and that it just needs to be teased out.
And what does this do to the mind as it thinks through the writing process? Instead of a free ramble, I’d be forced to try to end on certain words – which might dictate all of the words that come before… I have, at times, taken entire poems written by other people and rearranged the words into new poems, but never just a line as the end of each line…. and what would we call it if we did that at the beginning of each line? a golden backhoe? a golden rake or trowel? Maybe I’m thinking about that all wrong and it’s the color or the metal that changes. Maybe it’s called a purple shovel or a bronze shovel or a rusted steel shovel… and about that word rust, past/present, and active: rusted, rusty, rusting. This is, after all, about process, right?
If I were to write a golden shovel poem, I’d need to instruct the reader about the form, and perhaps depending on meaning, I might want to instruct to first read every last word and then the poem… or instruct to do the opposite. Do I want to prime the reader with someone else’s words, or close out with them? Admittedly, I avoid playing with form. I don’t write sonnets or blank verse or villanelles – mostly because my ear has gotten bad at hearing stressed and unstressed syllables. But this form is a different type of play thing… a new toy that might keep me occupied for a hour or two