Response to Texts and a "Blackout" Poem

Recently, I've been catching up on back issues of magazines that are faithfully delivered to my home and just as faithfully squeezed into the bulging, oversized magazine basket in my entryway. Among my favorites are Spin and Poets & Writers. Kevin Larimer's profile of David Rhodes in the Sept./Oct. 2008 issue inspired me to create a blackout poem a la Austin Kleon (Newspaper Blackout: Austin Kleon). Though I used a magazine instead of a newspaper and I circled the chosen words rather than marked out all others--minor alterations--I'm sure this endeavor still qualifies. I was rather tempted by the flow of Larimer's novelistic phrases but I carefully avoided their gravitational pull for a more sparse effect.

coming after
that interaction,
a certain sense, unrelated,
of abstraction
and
unmoored abandon
needles in


With this unexpected found poetry, I also discovered the germ of a poem.

Newspaper Blackout: Austin Kleon

Newspaper Blackout Poetry - redacting newspaper articles with a magic marker to make poems -  is becoming a popular activity for teaching poetry in English classrooms. Blackout poems, said to be part of the new “remix” culture, are a great entry point for students who keep poetry at arms length and an inticing task for readers and writers alike.  Writer and cartoonist Austin Kleon has created a collection of this "found poetry" or "altered text” in his poetry collection Newspaper Blackout, forthcoming from HarperCollins this month (April 2010). 

Visit his website for samples of poems from the book and checkout his blog for drawings and new blackout poems.  I came across a few poems that I found especially intriguing.  One, machine and memories, I'nve included here in its original form:

AUSTIN KLEON is a writer who draws. His He has drawn for clients such as Austin City Limits and South by Southwest. He works a day job designing websites, and lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Meghan and their dog Milo. You can see his work online at www.austinkleon.com.