Newspaper Blackout Poems

February 23, 2007 8:46 AM

Newspaper Blackout Poems "So much thrives on facsimile that when you see the real deal, it has none of the passion and feels like a desperate pose."
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson (25 comments total)

Reminds me of A Humument
posted by sanko at 8:50 AM on February 23, 2007

Ohh, very nice.
posted by piratebowling at 8:54 AM on February 23, 2007

Also, of Erasures. (self-link)
posted by gwint at 9:00 AM on February 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

If you like these, you might also enjoy artist Tom Phillips' A Humument. Some of my favorites from which are 104, 79, 298 and 314.
posted by aught at 9:00 AM on February 23, 2007

Yes, it's a lot like a Humument, though with out the "illuminated" quality. Check out Tom Phillips generally.
posted by The Bellman at 9:01 AM on February 23, 2007

On lack of preview, yeah.
posted by The Bellman at 9:02 AM on February 23, 2007

Homeland Security has its fingers in everything, nowadays.
posted by dhartung at 9:02 AM on February 23, 2007

Great! This is fun to do with cheap novels too, I'm fond of ruining bad books, or better, warping them to my satisfaction.
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posted by phaedon at 9:05 AM on February 23, 2007

Awesome idea, thanks for pointing this out, IRFH.
posted by interrobang at 9:08 AM on February 23, 2007

Wow. You just cheered up my morning. So beautiful, thanks.
posted by crackingdes at 9:10 AM on February 23, 2007

[______ is good] thanks,
Like outer space
descended dimly, draped
on today's news, caped, just
a few star spears
through black, a pole star,
an evening star, a morning one, a daily,
in ranks of all the blankness
fit to print and on the back
unredacted, the real news, "it's raining",
"Florence Henderson", it's raining.
posted by Rumple at 9:13 AM on February 23, 2007 [4 favorites]

Sorry, reminds me more of "poetry" created by fooling around with those refrigerator magnets.

The William S. Burroughs "cut up" method, which is random rather than directed, produces better results, IMO.
posted by beagle at 9:15 AM on February 23, 2007

I think that's quite nice. Two thumbs.
posted by blueshammer at 9:22 AM on February 23, 2007

This is great. Thanks for pointing it out, IRFH. I used to do this with thrift store books. The best was a book of poetry by Richard Thomas. Who knew John Boy could write?
posted by sleepy pete at 9:35 AM on February 23, 2007

February 16th's entry is absolutely stunning.

Fantastic post - thank you.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 9:37 AM on February 23, 2007

█████████ Awesome! ███████████
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 9:41 AM on February 23, 2007

This was really good. This one made me very happy.
posted by koeselitz at 9:58 AM on February 23, 2007

I shared it with my editors. Thanks for the diversion!
posted by owhydididoit at 10:08 AM on February 23, 2007

You can sort of do the same thing with Google cache.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 1:23 PM on February 23, 2007

This is cool. There's also Nets, by Jen Bervin.
posted by roll truck roll at 3:28 PM on February 23, 2007

Marvelous post and neat additional links. What fun. Makes me see pages of text differently.

The robo-poet, cut-up generator. The icon poet, poem generator.
posted by nickyskye at 5:01 PM on February 23, 2007

Crispin Hellion Glover does similar things too, though I think his books are slightly closer to this sorta thing than A Humument... but either way, they're ALL awesome.

It is also so great to hear him read his books aloud. They RULE.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 8:06 AM on February 25, 2007

Very cool.
posted by marginaliana at 11:28 AM on February 26, 2007

Update: He's just spun off the Newspaper Blackout Poems to its own site, with the following address: http://newspaperblackoutpoems.blogspot.com/

There's also now a Newspaper Blackout Challenge of the Week for would-be newspaper blackout poets.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:34 PM on March 1, 2007