Black-out Poetry
The Austin Kleon prompt I chose to complete this week instructed me to black out words on a page of Moby Dick until I was left with a poem. This prompt directly relates to our discussions in my Writing for Digital Media class because this week we have focused on remixing forms of media to create something new. Specifically, the prompt asked me to complete a selective remix because I had to remove words from the page to a create a poem using no original content.
While completing this prompt, I remembered a time when I made poems by doing the exact opposite. In my high school English class, I sat in the back of the classroom next the the metal heater. One day after I took my seat, I noticed a collection of magnetic words clinging to the heater next to me. The words were from a magnetic poetry set my teacher had, but I don't know how they ended up on the heater. While my teacher lectured about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I sat and stared at the cluster of words. I made sentences in my head, and when the teacher wasn't looking, I moved the magnets around to create the poems that were locked in my head. Once I had all the words in place on the side of the heater, I'd jot the sentences down in between my notes on Mark Twain. Before the class ended, I'd re-scramble the words, so I could create something new the next day. I did this everyday for weeks until the words mysteriously disappeared.
The Austin Kleon prompt, on the other hand, gave me two pages from Moby Dick and asked me to isolate individual words. I found this exercise to be a lot harder to complete when compared to my high school magnetic poetry. I was overloaded with words and possibilities, almost too many choices. It was hard for me to narrow down the words I wanted to keep and the ones to black-out. I kept changing my mind about the words I wanted to keep. I stared at page 612 of Moby Dick for an hour and a half, until I decided to take my black marker and start covering the page. I ended up with a semi-coherent, fully-amateur poem:
While completing this prompt, I remembered a time when I made poems by doing the exact opposite. In my high school English class, I sat in the back of the classroom next the the metal heater. One day after I took my seat, I noticed a collection of magnetic words clinging to the heater next to me. The words were from a magnetic poetry set my teacher had, but I don't know how they ended up on the heater. While my teacher lectured about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I sat and stared at the cluster of words. I made sentences in my head, and when the teacher wasn't looking, I moved the magnets around to create the poems that were locked in my head. Once I had all the words in place on the side of the heater, I'd jot the sentences down in between my notes on Mark Twain. Before the class ended, I'd re-scramble the words, so I could create something new the next day. I did this everyday for weeks until the words mysteriously disappeared.
The Austin Kleon prompt, on the other hand, gave me two pages from Moby Dick and asked me to isolate individual words. I found this exercise to be a lot harder to complete when compared to my high school magnetic poetry. I was overloaded with words and possibilities, almost too many choices. It was hard for me to narrow down the words I wanted to keep and the ones to black-out. I kept changing my mind about the words I wanted to keep. I stared at page 612 of Moby Dick for an hour and a half, until I decided to take my black marker and start covering the page. I ended up with a semi-coherent, fully-amateur poem:
The light sails day into night
simple circumstances foretell the time
a return to the hours of night
darkness is in the familiarity
a pulse gone in the wind
this swift ship leaves no dust behind
cry out for the frenzies of time
For my Writing for Digital Media class, the assignment for our remix class unit is to create something new from existing content. After completing the black out poem and thinking back to my experience with magnetic poetry, I was struck with an idea for the assignment. My plan is to take famous movie quotes and arrange them to make a poem. The quotes are removed from the context of the movie and like magnetic poetry, they will be scrambled around to make something new. For the purpose of this project, I laid out famous romance movie quotes and moved them around, until I made a break-up poem. Here is the poem that emerged:
You had me at hello
in all of the towns, in all of the world
it's like our time together is just ours
you will never age for me, nor fade, nor die
to me, you are perfect
You had me at hello
and it's not because I'm lonely, and
it's not because it's New Year's Eve
You made my life, Holly, but
I am just one chapter in yours
you told me you couldn't be with someone
who didn't believe in you
You had me at hello
I'll never let go
I wish I knew how to quit you
I hate the way you're not around and
the fact you didn't call, but
as you wish
Attached here is the list of movies, in order, that I used in the poem.
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