Explain the Golden Shovel Method (7 minutes)
Tell students that there is a form of poetry called the golden shovel in which part of one poem is borrowed and used as the starting point for a whole new poem. Here’s how the golden shovel works: You take one line from a poem (or you can take a few lines or a short poem in its entirety) and write it out down the right side of a page, one word per line. (The line that is borrowed is referred to as the “striking line.”) For example:
twinkle
twinkle
little
star
Those words then become the last words in the lines of a new poem. For example:
In Maggie’s brown eyes I notice a twinkle
as she begins to bark. There is no twinkle
in my eyes. This barking is more than a little
jarring. But still I throw the squeaky sheep; in this show, Maggie is the star.
Introduce "Truth" (3 minutes)
- Let students know that the poem they are about to read, “Truth,” comes from a book called One Last Word (2017), which pairs poems from the Harlem Renaissance with poems that Nikki Grimes wrote using the golden shovel method.
- Before students read the poem, you may wish to provide them with the following definitions:
- garish [GAIR-ish]: overly or disturbingly bright, flashy, or vivid
- silver lining: The expression “every cloud has a silver lining” means that every bad situation has something good in it—that there is a positive aspect to even the most difficult or unpleasant situation.