The Transformative Power of Blackout Poetry

Let's Create a Truer and More Beautiful World

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. April is National Poetry Month, so I’m kicking off the month with a post on the transformative power of blackout poetry. I’m so glad you have found us here. Every week, it brings me great delight to welcome new readers to this community. Welcome Heather, Thea and Jerri and many others! This space is for people who believe in the power of story, not only to change our own lives but to change the world. Pocketful of Prose is free to everyone, so please share with friends. You can also support my work by becoming a paid subscriber.

Without further ado, today’s pocket.

My first introduction to blackout poetry was over twenty years ago. It was my first or maybe my second year of teaching, and I was teaching 4^th graders in Baltimore City. I created a classroom library for the students, and one of the books I included was Eric Carle’s children’s book Dragons, Dragons and Other Creatures That Never Were, which contains beautifully illustrated modern and classic poems about dragons and other mythical creatures written by different poets.

There is a poem in the book called “The Phoenix” written by Paul Fleishman that goes something like this.

I am Phoenix

Phoenix

Everlasting!

I am Phoenix

Immortal

Eternal

The word phoenix repeats seven or so times. Every time the word repeats in the book, George, one of my fourth graders, had crossed out the word phoenix and written his name. I am George. George Everlasting! I am George. He even changed the title of the poem to The George.

George was a highly gifted student who regularly came to school without socks on even in the winter. He often wore the same clothes to school every day, and they sometimes reeked of urine. More than half of my students that year weren’t performing at grade level, and my instruction at the time was designed more for their benefit. I wasn’t worried as much about my high achievers, the kids like George who I could count on to master the basic work. I was overwhelmed with the challenges posed by my new job. I wasn’t giving a lot of thought to the fact that George was probably bored out of his mind with the basic work and was desperate for something to challenge him.

I can’t remember whether I discovered George’s words at the time or long after he left my class. I hope if I found them at the time, I had the with-it-ness to remark on his creativity and wit, but George had already proven that he was going to find his own value whether others saw it or not.

George was able not only to read Eric Carle’s poem, but also to understand it and re-imagine it. He was able to make himself visible in a world where he was largely invisible. George placed himself in the center of the poem and became a powerful creature capable of rising from the ashes. Through blackout poetry, George grew his own wings.

Blackout poetry, or erasure poetry, is a form of found poetry wherein a poet takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise obscures a large portion of the text, creating something new.

Blackout poetry is a form of transformation.

A few years ago, I was reminded of the power of blackout poetry, when my friend Andrea gave me a copy of Kate Baer’s I hope this finds you well for my birthday.

Sometimes when women grow big in a world that wants to keep them small, a large amount of hatred is directed at them. Kate Baer is a best-selling author who has received lots of praise in her inbox but also lots of vitriol. In I hope this finds you well, Kate takes the messages she has received from others, and she transforms them into beautiful, empowering poetry. Her creativity, similar to George’s, allows her to claim her own identity rather than being defined by the thinking of others, which is sometimes small, limited and even cruel. Her blackout poems shatter hatred and ignorance. With the broken pieces, she creates something wholly new and beautiful.  

Here’s a poem from Kate’s book.

Here’s another one of my favorites.

George and Kate got me thinking about what I might do with some of the messages I have received from others. Instead of burying myself beneath them, can I instead build them into something I can stand upon?

At one of my very first Back to School nights as a new teacher, I was so nervous as I stood in front of a classroom full of parents. I worried they could see right through me. I was working so hard, but I knew there were many ways that I was missing the mark, not providing their students with all that they needed to be successful. I was trying my best, though, and I asked parents to write me a note telling me a little about their child and how I might best help them. One parent misunderstood the assignment and wrote this instead.

For an English teacher, it is concerning how often you use the interjection um. You should really work on that.

I hope that now if I received a message like this, I would be able to laugh it off. I’ve gotten quite a few emails from parents over the years that would be good fuel for blackout poems, but this one hurt at the time, hitting me in a place where I already felt vulnerable and inadequate.

Here’s my first attempt at revisioning that message I received.

My work is not nearly as poetic as Kate’s, but I feel better.

A year and a half ago, we were informed that our foster son who had lived with us for almost two years would be returning to live with his birth dad. The news was sudden and abrupt, and it came via email. It felt so cold and impersonal to be told something so life changing and important in an email, especially since it was in direct contradiction to every message we had received up until that point, that our foster son would not be returning to live with his birth parents and that we should prepare for adoption. I can’t change the outcome of that decision, but I have often thought about turning that letter into a blackout poem. Perhaps, in doing so, I can release the part of me that is still raging over the unfairness of it all. Perhaps, I can find more freedom. Perhaps, like George, I, too, can learn to fly.

I encourage you to give this exercise a try and see what happens. You can start with any text, it can be a poem you love, where you circle the words that speak to you. It can also be something that someone said to you that still sticks with you and causes you pain. See if you can play with the message, deconstruct it and reframe it for yourself.

I think these days we could use a little more of the kind of thinking that blackout poetry offers.

1. Take an old structure.

2. Break it down.

3. Build something truer and more beautiful.

I would love to continue this conversation in the comments. What resonates with you today? What is one of your favorite blackout poems? Please also feel free to share your own creations if you give this a try.

One final thing, if you are local and enjoy storytelling, I invite you to come out to the event below on Thursday, April 18th. I will be performing a story live that night along with a few others. My story is actually about my first year of teaching. (If you are not local, say a prayer or hold a good thought for me, as this is my first time doing this, and I’m a wee bit scared.)