The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Hayes, Terrance. “The Golden Shovel.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55678/the-golden-shovel.

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

“The Golden Shovel” is a 48-line nonce poem by American poet Terrance Hayes. It’s written in two cantos of 12 free-verse couplets and intended to be an ekphrastic homage to Gwendolyn Brooks’ 1959 poem “We Real Cool.” The last word in every line of Hayes’ poem is taken from Brooks’ poem, so that the original source poem can be read vertically down the page. This later came to be known as the “golden shovel” poetic form. Lighthead, the collection in which this poem originally appeared, was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry.