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.
To say I don’t enjoy Halloween would be overstating it. I enjoy the candy, the festive atmosphere, and from time to time, I’ve even enjoyed dressing up in a costume. But overall, I have to admit that the holiday is, for me, and overall meh on the excitement scale.
The trouble is the costume. I’ve never had a good eye for these things and lack the motivation for the truly grandiose ideas that have come across my mind. Sure, I could spend months putting together that Voltron costume, or… I could order pizza and watch the Empire of Dreams documentary for the fifteenth time. Pizza and Star Wars wins every time.
Then I read about mundane costumes from parties in Japan, and think maybe I’m not out of the game after all. Costumes that require minimal props, can slant towards the snarky, and require an explanation? It’s almost like this thing was invented for me.
As Rob Walker points out in that post, it’s the combination of observation and creativity that makes it really interesting. Finding those things or moments that we all see but don’t register with everyone until they’re pointed out.
It’s made me think more about the things I write about. The majority of the poems I’ve written come from a personal place and could be considered confessional in nature. A lot of those poems are also born out of moments or images that wouldn’t be considered all that dramatic all by themselves. Someone sitting on the couch playing a game of solitaire. Walking along a sidewalk. Those moments wouldn’t make great action movies, but they do make for interesting settings for a poem. All it took is the patience (or boredom in some cases) to stare at them for awhile.
The script I’ve been working on is another example. It’s not a huge “save the world” sort of thing and the original idea started out with a very simple moment that kept coming back to me over and over, demanding to be looked at more closely. It was the mundane idea of someone sleeping on a couch and being woken up suddenly. That’s it. But eventually, there was some more to it – I just had to be patient (or bored) enough to wait for it.
I suppose it ties into how Stephen King describes stories as fossils in On Writing – how they’re actually all there and just need to be dug out. A little bump in the ground is pretty mundane – almost like someone’s glasses steaming up as they sip a hot beverage.
It’s when you dig a little bit deeper and realize there’s a whole skeleton down there waiting for you that things get really interesting.
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 recently started a weekly accountability email with my friend and fellow writer Charles where we share what we’ve managed to do that week. Sometimes it’s uplifting, others it’s a bit of a downer, and sometimes it’s downright comical. So I figured it was worth a shot also broadcasting these things to the entire world. Because why not?
As you may have noticed from previous posts, I’ve been reading through A Slip of the Keyboard by Terry Pratchett and will probably finish that up towards the beginning of next week. This was a lender from Charles along with its companion, A Blink of the Screen, which is a collection of his shorter fiction works. I tried the fiction first but couldn’t quite get into it – almost how I love everything Tom Robbins has written but couldn’t get into his collection of shorter works, Wild Ducks Flying Backwards. However, I do believe some of Pratchett’s novels will be making their way into my To-Read pile very soon.
Last week, I got feedback on my screenplay and started the process of re-writing when I realized that there were enough changes to the first fifteen pages that it would fundamentally change the tone of a couple characters and at least one relationship. A bit daunting. So I polished those fifteen pages up and sent it off to the person who gave me the feedback to see what they thought. Heard back from them that there’s still work to be done, but they feel I’m on the right track. I’ll take it. To page sixteen and beyond!
I’ve also been at work revising poems for another project I’ve been at work on this year and which I’d like to see done by the end of December. After an initial burst of deep editing the first session, I’ve come to realize that four to five poems is my limit for one day. I’ll start off hot by digging into the text and making change after change… and then a few poems later, realize there were no marks on the page at all. Perhaps that poems was actually fine as is, but more than likely I was going far too easy on it. Poems need tough love as well.
The last poetry reading Charles Bukowski would give was March 31, 1980. NSFW because… it’s Bukowski and alcohol was involved. But mostly because it’s Buk.
“Instructions For A Bad Day” by Shane Koyczan