INTRODUCTION

What , this plain reason is why you ran away from home? Foolish child, imagine a hare and a lion.  Did Whiteford, neighbor of Ben jamin Franklin, imagine an art where both win? Nay.  In not his own, but in others, the lion is destined to prevail. Child, reality is not where just someone can win arbitrarily. Someone elses war is not yours to fight. Understand ? If yes, stop this pettiness now. 

Blackout poetry is a form of art that, building on others’ work and writing, creates a completely new product. Take, for example, the writing above. 

What , this plain reason is why you ran away from home? Foolish child, imagine a hare and a lion.  Did Whiteford, neighbor of Ben jamin Franklin, imagine an art where both win? Nay.  In not his own, but in others, the lion is destined to prevail. Fool, reality is not where just someone can win arbitrarily. Someone elses war is not yours to fight. Understand ? If yes, stop this pettiness now. 

The art of blackout poetry dates back to even before the establishment of America with Caleb Whiteford, the neighbor of Benjamin Franklin. Taking redacted versions of the press, he would modify the newspaper to create humorously and creative play-on-words that brought a new meaning to the piece he was changing. Since Whiteford, blackout poetry has evolved into an art form accessible to anyone. 

STEPS!

  • Take any source of writing you can find—- whether from an old newspaper, book, or magazine, anything will do! But you can also get creative with unconventional sources like food recipes or Wikipedia pages. The writing world is your oyster— as long as it has words, you can pick whatever you like!

  • Narrow down the text to key words and phrases that you want in your new poem. If a word jumps out at you but you’re not sure where it might fit with your piece, mark it anyway! The process is organic and completely up to you. Do what feels right in the moment.

  • Now that you’ve chosen your text and your words, it’s time to black out the rest of the text to make your final product. You can get as creative with this process as you want— some choose to make art pieces with their black-out (pictures) while others choose to completely paint it a solid color.

IMPACTS

Black-out poetry is the epitome of writing: taking inspiration from the amazing works of others and building off it to create a completely new piece. After all, writing is not a single-person endeavor; it is the culmination of the inspiration from all previous works you have read, and all the authors you have admired. In this way, black-out poetry embodies this ideal the most— evolving, changing, and ultimately inspiring more and more writers. 



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