Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
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
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!
This idea is so simple, but I believe these are true poems (some stronger than others, but all interesting). I like the challenge of making them from words that are already there -- sometimes in the same order, other times using a white line so your eye knows which order to read the words (occasionally, it's not left-to-right, top-to-bottom). A couple favorite quotes from the "how to" section at the end:"The solution to any writer's block is to place some constraints on yourself.""Wherever you d...
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 rec...
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
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!
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...
Review copy from author/publisherSo. 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 cel...
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.