In writing this blog today, I was reminded of a story about the author James Joyce. According to the story, a close friend of Joyce’s called on him one afternoon as Joyce was in the throes of writing his opus magnum tome, “Ulysses”. The friend found Joyce despondent and depressed. When the friend asked Joyce what was wrong, Joyce replied, “the work, that’s what’s wrong. It’s always the work.”

After some probing, the friend discovered that Joyce was depressed because he thought writing the book was taking far too long.

“How many words have you written today?” asked the friend.

After thinking for a moment Joyce replied, “Five, I think. Yes, I’ve written five words.”

“Well,” said the friend trying to be supportive, “that’s something isn’t it. Five words are better than none.”

“I suppose,” said Joyce, “but I just don’t know what order to put them in.”

It is a great thought. Words in their raw form are just expressions that are meaningless until assembled into the correct order. All that separates “War and Peace”, or Joyce’s “Ulysses” from any novel in a publisher’s slush pile is simply the arrangement of the words. Just hand someone a dictionary and say, “now go write a best seller – here are all the words”.  I could go on and on with this, but I won’t.

What I want to talk about today is ‘blackout poetry’, because blackout poetry is all about word arrangement. And no, blackout poetry is not poetry written after having a few too many at your local watering hole. Not at all. Blackout poetry is poetry that is created when a poet takes an existing piece of text and covers, or ‘blacks out’ most of the source text, leaving a smattering of words exposed on the page to form a poem.

The blackout poet can use any piece of existing text that they want. It could be an article in a magazine, a page from a paperback novel or even a classic like “Ulysses”.  Most poets look for a theme for their blackout poem. Usually, they start by looking for a word or two near the beginning of the page, and then they try to find other words throughout the page that enhance the imagery that they are trying to project.

If you are interested in writing your own ‘blackout poem’ here is what you need to do:

1. Decide on your source text — This must be a physical piece of paper. If you use a page from a book, you will probably need to cut the page from the book, so be aware that the book will be permanently damaged. Or you can do as I did when I wrote my blackout poem – simply download a page from the internet. There are lots of blackout poetry free sites that allow you to download pages.
2. Read the page carefully two or three times– Look for words or short phrases that seem to call out to you or seem to fit well with other words on the page. When you see these words, circle them lightly using a pencil. Look for words that seem to build on each other to enhance your theme.
3. Create your markup – When you are satisfied with the words you have selected for your poem, read them until you are satisfied with them. The length of the poem should be about 15 words, give or take a few words. When you have finished your poem, use a black marker or dark crayon to obscure all the text except the words to your poem.
4. Share your poem – You will need to take a picture of your poem or scan it into your computer. This is unique to blackout poetry. You must take a photo or scan of your poem for it to qualify as a blackout poem.

Of course, I will include here my first effort at blackout poetry. I used as my source file, a page from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, “The Great Gatsby.”

NOTE: As the readability of this blog sometimes differs between browsers, and renders differently in mobile applications, I will cheat a bit and include the words that I selected on my source page here:

heightened sensitivity

dignified

at the end

abortive sorrows

winded elations

I enjoyed

the ragged edge

But here is my first blackout poem: