My husband showed me a blackout poem when we first met, one by the author Austin Kleon.
You take a piece of text (book, newspaper article, flyer) and blackout parts of it with a marker to make something new. In that way it feels more like I’m a sculptor chipping away at a block or an archeologist brushing in the dust. There is a secret in the text I’m about to uncover.
Here’s me turning an article in the San Francisco chronicle into a poem:
Now I’m a kid again,
listening to the mighty roar into the sky,
(a seemingly endless ballet accessible without place)
five minutes run like a feral cat, you hop
without a ticket.
I know that the Sky, one of two decks,
offers views, long lines, critics who love,
oh and an elevator, doors open.
I really like ‘critics who love.’
Now I can expand on it if I like. I could include a few more words I originally blocked out to create something resembling crossing over, like:
I know that the Sky, one of two decks,
offers views, long lines, critics who love, and new places.
Over a long lunch, the smile in me
enters and walks just short of
an elevator, doors open.
Pick up a marker and a page of anything - junk mail, a menu, whatever's lying around - and see what's hiding in it. If you find something, send it to me.