Black Out Poetry Discussion

The premise of black out poetry is to pick out random words from a book, magazine, pamphlet, newspaper, etc., and make a poem out of it by blacking out the other words on the page. (You could also do this by picking out individual letters.)

There are different ways to do it. One possibility is to lightly circle the words that stand out. Next, take a magic marker and black out all the other words except for the ones that have been lightly circled. Some people add designs that may or may not have anything to do with the words of the black out poem.

The composition can be the exact words in the exact order as they were on the blacked out page. Or the word artist can re-arrange the selected words into a new poem and then, show both versions.

Black out poems can help with creativity. It asks the poet to consider words in a unique way. It makes composing a more visual process.

One problem for me is I didn't enjoy breathing the magic marker fumes while blacking out the unused words. Maybe painting out the words would have worked better for me.

An advantage of the black out poem is mobility. A word artist can take a magazine or other medium along with a magic marker and compose this type of poem anywhere.

My advice is to have fun and don't expect the poem to make sense. 

For my examples, I took words from a magazine page. 

(Rearranged version)

Ether

False tick tock shotgun

you only get one spin.

Coffee meeting slipped away,

numb sand lulls.

Forget discomfort!

Pale knuckles roll

memoir heart-lived

adventure.

______________________


Original version of the words on the black out page:


Tick tock lulls false coffee meeting

Numb adventure slipped away sand

Roll knuckle pale shotgun

Discomfort heart memoir lived

Forget. You only get one spin.

Ether


Taken in its entirety, neither version of the poem makes much sense. It's more impressionistic and the images don't necessarily connect.

I only used the words that I didn't black out. However, in the first version, I rearranged the order of the words.

Purists may prefer not to re-arrange anything and take phrases as they go along.

I did not include a picture of my blacked out page because I didn't finish blacking out all the white space. As mentioned earlier, I got tired of breathing the fumes from the marker I was using.

For those interested in this form of poetry, I recommend researching it on Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest, and/or Google.