All of the previous blackout poems I’d posted were created a few years ago and had been living in a folder, gathering dust. In a burst of inspiration last week, I decided to spend some time working on some new blackouts and this is the first one I’m sharing.
Full disclosure: this was posted on Thursday and backdated to Wednesday. Perhaps that’s sacrilege to some folks, but this is my little red wagon and I’ll pull it how I like. Enjoy.
Another blackout poem for Word Wednesday.
At some point, I have to get back to doing these because they were intensely fun to create and felt more like play than almost any writing I’ve done lately. All of these that I’ve posted are from several years ago.
Another newspaper blackout poem from several years ago finally seeing the light of day. Once again, this concept was stolen from Austin Kleon.
It’s interesting going through this folder that’s been sitting idle for years now and discovering what’s inside. Some of it is okay, some is just me playing around and making a mess, which can be fun to look at as well.
Trying something a little new this week by adding Word Wednesday to the schedule and sharing a poem. Seems to make sense since I’ve already talked about my writing a few times already.
This was an idea that I swiped from Austin Kleon, but since he wrote an entire book about stealing for the sake of art, I don’t feel all that bad about it. The concept is pretty simple – take something from a newspaper or magazine and redact or black out the parts that you don’t want to make a poem. Or, to reveal the poem that’s always been there. However you’d like to think about it.
“I’ve found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.” – Don Roff
The best thing about having two writing projects going at the same time is there’s always something to work on. Get stuck on this one, move to the other, and then vice versa. The worst part about having two writing projects going at the same time is that if you’re timing is off, you can wind up in the edit phase with both of them at the same time.
That’s where I am now.
The first project, a screenplay, was sent out for feedback awhile ago and came back with plenty of notes (totally expected) and an encouraging pat on the back (bonus!). I rewrote the first 15 pages, sent it back for some more feedback, got more notes, and am now in the process of working a full draft. The other project is a book of poems where I’ve stopped writing new material and have been focusing on revising what’s been written to assess where I’m at in the overall scheme of things.
One of the gifts from this process has been coming face-to-face with things I’ve often said but now have to question if they’re really true. The first thing is that “I know that all my poems aren’t great and I’m willing to write through the bad ones to get to the good ones.” The second is that “Because I only write for myself, it’s okay that I don’t revise things.”
Looking at those on my screen, it’s pretty easy to see the cozy log cabin of lies and deception that I constructed for myself. I mean, inside my head or coming out of my mouth, those things sound great. But sitting there in front of me, it’s tough to not call it for what it is.
Really, it’s an excuse to not do the extra work of editing and rewriting. In fact, now that I’ve exposed my own lies for all the world (or at least the couple dozen people who might stumble on this) to see, I’ll go a step further and say that I’ve been neglecting an entire portion of the writing process itself to my own detriment as well as the work itself.
Much as discouraging people to talk politics and religion leads to people not knowing how to talk about politics and religion, not editing and rewriting means you’re absolute crap at them. Even if I am writing primarily for my own pleasure, that doesn’t mean it has to suck, right?
So here I am, enduring the edit and trying to find the joy in it.
I may need a flashlight.
too much beer and not enough sleep tearing at the seams with a switchblade,
you’re getting too old for all the old games – time to find some other pastime to wast time
don’t stand too long, your knees will start to hurt
don’t sit too long, it’s gonna kill you in the end
but doesn’t everything?
push the controls forward and watch the earth fill the windows
staring into an eternity that’s so unsure but comforting
these wanderings don’t mean much now, but maybe it’s a comfort
to know that nothing lasts forever … especially you.