Newspaper Blackout

by Austin Kleon

Poet and cartoonist Austin Kleon has discovered a new way to read between the lines. Armed with a daily newspaper and a permanent marker, he constructs through deconstruction--eliminating the words he doesn't need to create a new art form: Newspaper Blackout poetry.

Highly original, Kleon's verse ranges from provocative to lighthearted, and from moving to hysterically funny, and undoubtedly entertaining. The latest creations in a long history of "found art," "Newspaper Blackout" will challenge you to find new meaning in the familiar and inspiration from the mundane.

"Newspaper Blackout" contains original poems by Austin Kleon, as well as submissions from readers of Kleon's popular online blog and a handy appendix on how to create your own blackout poetry.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Art, Writing, Art Design, Design, Creative

173 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2010

About the author

I’m a writer who draws. I make art with words and books with pictures. Author of Steal Like An Artist and other bestsellers. Visit my website: http://austinkleon.com/

Reviews

[Unky Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this! Austin Kleon takes a felt pen and blacks out a page of newspaper until a poem emerges! Fantastic poems that are often shockingly deep!

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review: https://hiplibrariansbookblog.com/201...

[Alejandro Saint-Barthélemy · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a traditional book of poems (I mean this in the sense of poetic poetry, not just old-fashioned one) this lacks artistic beauty, craft and depth; as a piece of contemporary art or contemporary poetry, it just lacks originality (which Austin admits himself in another book), modernity and shock value.

The most funny thing going on about this $1 cheeseburger of a poetry book is that I've read somewhere Austin Kleon saying that before being published he was really mad, tense and anxious, reading what other poets were doing...
SOMEBODY KILL ME.

[Broke Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered the concept of Blackout Poetry when a friend got her hands on Kleon's book. After going through it, we decided to make our own versions of Newspaper Blackouts. It was great fun!
We introduced it to more people and even tried blacking out pages from old novels. Newspaper Blackout has minimalist poems which range from funny limericks to surprisingly deep lines. The poet also gives us a short history on how similar concepts had come up in the past. Overall, it was an interesting read and you'd definitely want to try blackout poetry at least once on a boring Sunday afternoon.

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one a lot. First, the formatting was wicked awesome. Second, the poems weren't dumb. Seriously, poetry can be super stupid....it can also be deep and meaningful. While none of these were overly meaningful to me-I didn't decide to go out and change the world. It DID make me view the written word just a little differently. These were well structured, good, poems. And the format, to repeat, was wicked awesome.

So, if you want to read something cool, this is a good one to check out.

Woody Swear Scale-there are zero. Since he used newspapers, it would have been out of place had their been some. Safe for ya, Woody!

[gail ♛ · Rating 1 out of 5]

These poems didn't do anything for me. I love the idea of blackout poetry, but these ones weren't as good as I was expecting.

[Kasandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kleon's debut is a collection of found poetry from the pages of The New York Times. It's gotten rave reviews and been featured on NPR and in The New Yorker, so clearly he's appealing to a wide audience with his work. He "blacks out" the words he doesn't want and keeps the rest, a technique used by many former writers, which he is kind enough to list in his forward.

This results in some pretty silly poems, and many truly funny ones. Unfortunately, when you use this technique, it's often hit-or-miss. Though many of these found "poems" hit, and made me giggle in delight, and at least one has inspired me to perhaps borrow from it and use lines as an epigram, they are often more like koans or sayings because of their very short length than whole poems, which I found aggravating. Lots of page space is taken up with black markings-out, which gives great visual appeal to what's left in some instances, but feels like a waste of trees, considering that the book is 173 pages long. I'm not sure why many of the pieces here were included; the books feels far too long. If it had been whittled down, I think it could have rated 4 stars from me. For humor alone, I almost want to rate it that high, but the novelty of the approach wears off quickly enough that you're left with only the words to contemplate, and though these may appeal to those who don't read or write much poetry, novelty alone isn't really enough to carry a book, in my opinion. (Plus, this technique isn't really 'novel' anymore, so though it can be charming, it's not new.)

That said, I did find the book as a whole a refreshing change of pace from my usual poetry picks, and I did find value in it and will keep it on my shelf for re-reading. I'd like to see what Kleon can do on his own as a poet, though I'm not certain he writes "normal"/unaltered poems.

If you like found poetry, you will enjoy these. And if you need a laugh, you'll find some in here. Kleon started these on his own blog, and has a website:
Newspaper Blackout

Here were some of my favorites:

Orientation

Love Letter (about halfway down the page, posted near Valentine's Day

Kickboxing
Lawyers
Dirty Word

(You really have to see these to appreciate them, which is why I'm loathe to try to duplicate/post one here, BUT.... Kleon's website does not turn up nearly any of the poems I liked when I search for them by title. So, here's one I enjoyed, especially because it's got some slant rhyme in it and "sounds" more like a poem):

The Heat

the Heat,
can be a little
startling to newcomers,
That's why you
have
nights
stuffed with ice and beers,
w h e, n
back home,"
is like a giant
freezer,"
we're sitting
in the
Park.
drinking
margaritas

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review copy from author/publisher

So. This was one of those books I knew I had to get my hands on the moment I heard about it. And a big thank you goes out to author Austin Kleon for so wonderfully helping a copy find it's way to my doorstep.

I'm ashamed to admit that I broke my review rule for this collection. I placed it right on the top of the pile. I know I shouldn't have, but I just couldn't help myself. I started reading it in the car on the way to the chinese buffet the other night, to celebrate my son's 7th birthday. I locked myself in my car on my lunch breaks this weekend just to have a few minutes alone with it.

And now.

Emptiness. Sadness. Regret.

I wish I had waited. I wish I could have made it last longer. It's like taking the last bite of your favorite piece of cake - dripping with chocolate and caramel, moist and delicious - soooo good you can't help but finish it quickly. Though the whole time you are telling yourself to slow down and savour it. That you'll be sorry you didn't make it last.

Oh god, did I just call Austin's book moist and delicious?!?

It's really amazing to think that he created these poems almost by accident. Frustrated with writing, struggling with the process, Austin picked up a black marker and began to blackout sections of the newspaper, circling a few words here and there that caught his eye. And what words remained became poems. Posting them on his blog turned out to be just what he needed. People liked what they were seeing, wanted more, and word spread throughout the internet.

Four years after he created his first Blackout Poem, Austin Kleon became a published poet.

His collection is Strange. Beautiful. Breath-taking. Humorous. Witty. Creative.

There are themes that run throughout the book: Nakedness, monsters, bugs, wives, kings, captains, love, Texas.

Austin shares contest winners poems at the end of his book, and invites the reader to create their own blackout poems as well.

A very unique twist on a very old concept. Starting with a page full of words, and removing the ones he has no use for, Austin creates more than a poem. Every page he touches become a piece of art.

If you have not seen his work, please visit his blog, which he updates quite frequently, for sneak peeks of his work. He also refers throughout his book to A Humument by Tom Phillips, which I encourage you to check out as well.

Maybe one day I will find myself attempting to create my own blackout poem. In the meantime, I will get my fix from Kleon's blog, and see if I can't get my hands on a copy of A Humument.

[trestitia ⵊⵊⵊ deamorski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edit:
Redditte dolanırken gördüm. Online Blackout Poetry Maker yapmışlar resmen (adı bu değil ben öyle demeyi uygun gördüm, eski forumcular anlar beni). Güzel olmuş.

2016: HER ŞEY DÖRT YIL ÖNCE BU ADAMIN BİR ŞİİRİNİ tumblrda GÖRMEMLE BAŞLADI. ŞİİR DEDİYSEK, ÖYLE DEĞİL. MİKEMMEL HERİF.

çok süper olduğum için dokuz yıl sonra okumuşum. gerçi tumblr köşesinden geldiğim bütün kitapların sanırım tamamı öyle.
nys.

Kleon bu işin nereden nasıl çıktığını anlatıyor ve bu işi yapan ilk ben değilim diye söylüyor. normalde bilinir ki kurcalardım ama adı geçen diğer sanat isimlerini araştırmadım.

teknik mükemmelötesi ama iş gerçekten "şiir"e gelince yavan gelebilir. adını hatırlamadığım bir yöntem mi ne vardı sözlükten şansa kelime seçip onlardan şiir yazmak gibi bir şeydi, öyle bir havası yok, ki verin bana rastgele beş kelime yazarım süperim çünkü, şiir de olur, ama sağlam bir şiir mi olur buna büyüklerimiz ne der bilemiyorum elbette; durum biraz böyle burda. mimari yarışmalarda estetikten göz kamaştırıp işlevde sınıfta kalan tasarımlar vardır bazen hani.



ben de yapmıştım bundan ama deviantarta yüklememişim, kırıldım kendime biraz. hatta anabritannica'nın yıl cildinden yaptığım kitap ayırma aparatından arta kalan saifelerden de yine blackout poetryli -ama minimal- ayraçlar yapmıştım. eco-friendly artist lol.

demek istediğim sanat camiası ileri gelenlerinden biri olarak değerli kıymetli koleksiyonluk bir iş olarak görüyor, edebiyat camiası radikallerine hadi len ordan diyor kendimi de üç süperle uğurluyorum.
.

[Sierra Overby · Rating 4 out of 5]

a charming example of how limitation is the starting point of creativity.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Armed with a newspaper and a magic marker, Austin Kleon makes the process of writing poetry more about chiseling away instead of starting from scratch. I am a huge fan of found poetry and have my students create found and headline poems every April during National Poetry Month. What I always find when students perform these exercises is that at first they think the assignment is just for fun, but then end up creating something really profound.

The idea is the same in Newspaper Blackout. An otherwise mundane newspaper article is now suddenly something really profound.


My only criticism of this book is that sometimes the poems were a little hard to follow and the flow of the poem was stifled because your brain was too busy trying to translate the order of everything.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Newspaper Blackout is such a fun & creative idea!

I took screenshots from classic literature like Lord of the Flies, Frankenstein & Animal House and did some blackout poetry with my sister. We found it really fun & revealing.

What I love most out of these poems is not only the transformative quality but how they reveal the interworking & innermost thoughts & desires by the poets themselves.

I can't wait to make more!

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not much on poetry. Not that I don't like it. I just read very little of it except for an occasional visit with Rilke, Sexton or Neruda.

In the musical GYPSY, three strippers sing about the need for a gimmick to "get ahead" in their business. The gimmick here is "newspaper blackout" poetry. A technique where all you need is a copy of an old newspaper and a black magic marker(s) to create poetry.

Kleon's idea works so beautifully that you even forget the "gimmick" after about the third or fourth poem you read. I think this is amazing and would be a GREAT WAY TO GET STUDENTS INTO READING AND WRITING POETRY! I know it made me want to buy stock in Sharpie.

This is not to discount the poetry either. They are simple and beautiful. Truly art!

PS There are detailed instructions included for anyone (i.e. TEACHERS) that wants to try it. It also includes an essay about how he "discovered" the technique as well as some AMAZING contest winning poems.

[Luke Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was excited when I heard that I had won this book from Goodreads First Reads, and it turned out better than expected. The concept behind the poems in this book is that they are created by selecting phrases and words from two columns of newspaper and blacking out the unwanted parts. It makes for both an interesting and entertaining read. After finishing the book I used the how-to section to create some of my own. I discovered that it is harder that it looks to get a great poem! I thoroughly recommend this book for practically anyone. (Though it should be noted that there are a few slightly naughty poems.)

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fun read. Each poem stands on it's own, but when read in the narrative context of the book as a whole they together became more than the sum of their parts. The poems find a niche resting at the crossroads of the whimsical and the profound. The origin of the poems mitigates any platitudinal line to mere amusement that such could be found within the Times, and when a poem touches the heart, that amusement transfigures into awe that it was there, under our noses the entire time, needing only a wizard with a magic marker to show us what we've been missing.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now, I'm usually not really into poetry (maybe because I haven't found anything I found that great before) but this one was different.
Some of these poems were amazing and others I didn't really care for at all.
But the thing I really loved about this book was the idea behind it and how the poems were made. That is by taking a newspaper and blacking out lots of the words and the ones that are left are a poem. It inspired me to start my own ones soon and I'm really excited about that!
I also wanna read some more poetry maybe :)

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up after seeing it in Barnes and Noble because I just had my 9th graders do "Blackout Poems" at the end of their poetry unit. It's a really fun way of playing with words and creating poems in a way that's a little less stressful on kids who are a little afraid of poetry.

Kleon's poem's are fun and interesting with some keen observations about life. Thoroughly enjoyable. I'm also happy to have this book to show to my students next time we do blackout poetry.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Discovered this through a recent newspaper assignment. Just a mention of a "Dadaist bar game" to be played after a local poetry and fiction reading. Austin Kleon takes sharpy to newspaper and creates poems by blacking out the words he doesn't need. It's so perfectly simple and appealed to my love of both wordplay and puzzles. I'll definitely be trying my hand at this.

[Joe Maggiore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the book overall. Each time I opened the book to read another poem, I found myself excited to see the next one. I also was constantly hoping to see the ones that had "white reading path lines". Not sure of that's clear to people who have read the book but oh well. It's such a unique and cool idea for a book and I'm interested in other books this author has written.

[MAILA · Rating 3 out of 5]

cukup menarik, tapi karena puisinya dalam bahasa inggris dan kosakata bahasa inggris saya kurang jadi di beberapa puisi saya malah merasa ''hah?''

setelah baca ini jadi iseng mengambil majalah dan menghitamkan sedemikian rupa juga tapi jadinya malah fail. emang gabisa kalau disuruh bikin ginian sama puisi #sixword gitu wq

[Mary Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing writer and artist. Changed the way I think about most everything.

[arai rivers · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty neat. There were some I really liked, and some I didn't like so much, but I believe this kind of poetry is a talent and I can't wait to see if I can do it myself.

[Rubal · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Aiman Sabir · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Creativity is not about the words that are scarcely enough. It's all about the art within, that is eccentrically limitless!"

This book focuses on reinventing poetry from the scraps of drab newspapers. The technique is called "blackout poetry" which is so much fun and maybe, far better than sitting in a slump or moaning over the imperfections of your primary craft.

In this book, Austin kleon, the-Master-Creativity, made it darn sure that crazy, life-altering poems are not promised to come from genius minds. Rather, poetry can be born in the most unlikely ways. Because it's not always our wisdom that produces phenomenal art. Sometimes it's our stupidity that pretty much nails it!!

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good!

[Scout Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking up poetry books when I found Newspaper Blackout and thought I would give it a try. The concept seemed like it had potential.

I read this book quickly because most of the poems were barely a small paragraph's worth of text...

I was disappointed by most of the poems in general. I have not personally tried to write my own newspaper blackout poem so I'm not sure how easy it is (to write a good one), and I know some poetry books have poems that aren't the greatest added to them just to fill space (can't have a book with only 20 poems), but I feel like they could have been better.

Best poem (imo):
The Bully

The bully is
The most terrifying victim
A coward filled with evil.

A terrorist
Swayed by his experience
Into spreading devastation

But on occasion
He gets slugged
-Page 12

Poems I did not like
"The buzz of insects"
At night, the buzz of Insects hushed us
with a ritualistic sound.
-Page 23
>>>is this really a poem or is it prose? Or is it just a sentence?

"The Bride"
The bride
Insisted that she had never had intercourse
But the horse she was on all of a sudden,
He became skittish
-Page 120
>>>wtf? I get these are random words from a newspaper but what was the point of this poem??
gross vibes

As I went through the book, I read mediocre poem after mediocre poem. At the beginning I expected to get some I didn't like but then I realized they were almost all super short and lacking emotion, meaning or anything interesting. Random words that form 2 sentences about a topic... who thinks that is poetry? I didn't feel like it was really poetry. I think any NB poem that feels like random words strung together has failed as a NB poem/poem in general.

If you like poems that have that random-word-construction feel, you will like this book. If your heart yearns for deeper, emotion filled, relatable, raw, beautiful poetry, finding poems like that in this style will be hard and you won't find any of those in this book.

I would recommend if you're interested in learning about the style and maybe as a creative exercise trying to make your own. This book is an example of the author's style, but I think this type of poetry could go a lot deeper and longer poems that are more than 1-3 lines could be written. I honestly had higher hopes for this book which is why I only gave it a 3 star rating.

Warning: If you think Rupi Kaur is bad, you will HATE this.

[Jessica (thebluestocking) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for free from the publisher. All content and opinions are my own.

I think this is the best idea! Here's how NPR summarizes the idea behind Newspaper Blackout: "Instead of starting with a blank page, Poet Austin Kleon grabs The New York Times and a permanent marker and eliminates the words he doesn't need."

Newspaper Blackout is a handy little book. It opens with brief history of altered works - the art of making art out of existing art. Google "altered books" and you'll get a glimpse of just how versatile and cool this genre is.

The next, largest, chuck of the book contains Kleon's poems, which, for the most part, left me a little cold. There were a few, though, that I thought were great. My favorite is called "Martin Strapped In." I wish I could find a picture of it for you, but here is my best recital of it:

Martin strapped in
he was not
scared
this thing flies
he said
to prove
it
he
jumped off
my garage
in
his
jetpack
fueled by dreams

Check out the newspaper blackout poems section of Austin Kleon's website for visual examples of work.

The final part of the book consists of a section called "How to Make a Newspaper Blackout Poem." What I loved about this section was that Kleon obviously wants people to try this out. He doesn't have that proprietary vibe that some artists have. He enjoys making these poems and thinks you will too. He even includes five newspaper blackout poems that won a contest on his website. I might have to try my hand at it this weekend.

Great idea. Okay poems. Well thoughtout book.

[Aneesa · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Andrea found this book in a sidewalk free box and brought it home for me, I was already a fan of Kleon's blog and had read several of his newspaper blackout poems (mostly horoscopes), so I knew how entertaining and moving they could be. The technique is really not all that different from just writing a poem from scratch, if you ask me. But I like his attitude toward it: the book includes an introduction to the history of blackout poetry (not that he knew it when he started, but bloggers made it clear to him that he had not invented the genre), and the preface is so positive. When he says: "This is not hard, anybody can do it, I didn't mean to do it, you should do it," I thought, "Well, you have to say that." But what he didn't have to go on to say is: "You should do it on the bus instead of Sodoku, this will cure your writer's block, you should use the creations to create something more" (he rightly doesn't suggest that anyone else will get a book of them published). I felt like his case was so strong it must have been truly felt.

What surprised me is how well the poems fit together as a book. They follow a narrative and return to themes which have more to do with the poet's vision and story than the medium (just like a "real" book): childhood, science fiction, horny teenagers, growing up and returning home at thirty, topics of the day (foreclosures--from articles on the subject or not?), even his move to the weird state of Texas in the middle of writing the manuscript, and his wife's name.

[Jessica Mocha]

This entire book is great! It's a fun way to create poetry with words that are already on the page. The poet, Austin Kleon takes newspapers, or other books, and choses certain words to make a poem and blacks out the rest of the page. For example, there is a poem that says:
"looks like work. but i think of it as play". That's the whole poem, but even though it was short, it takes time and creativity to pick a few words out of a text to make something completely different. This is a great activity for middle school students to do. Most of them think they cannot write poetry, so this makes it easier for them because the words are already on the page. I would assign students a short newspaper article and they would have to first look through the paper and underline all the powerful words they see. Next, they would think of a topic based on the words they underlined. Then if they need to add, or cross out, words to create their poem they can. Lastly, when they have all the words they want to create the poem, they black out the rest of the words they are not using. This activity shows student they can change the meaning and create something new fairly easily.