Hitting Ezra Pound with a Stick

The "golden shovel" is a fun poetic form to work with. Here are the rules for the Golden Shovel:

Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.

Use each word in the line (or lines) as an end word in your poem.

Keep the end words in order.

Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).

The new poem does not have to be about the same subject as the poem that offers the end words.

If you pull a line with six words, your poem would be six lines long. If you pull a stanza with 24 words, your poem would be 24 lines long. And so on.

Here is the original poem:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough. - Ezra Pound

And here's the golden shovel poem I wrote, based on it:

Ezra, Waiting for a Train

When I saw Ezra Pound in the

subway station, I thought he was an apparition.

Was there something I'd had too much of?

Alcohol? Weed? No, I'd long ago given up these.

But of all the faces

I ever imagined I would see in

this station, his was the

last. He stood out in the crowd,

and I don't mean he was pretty, like flower petals.

He had the most godawful plaid jacket on

and his beard was all scraggly, like a

shaggy dog that has gotten wet.

I told him his poetry was like a black

hole. Then I hit him with a tree bough. - Jeff Barnes