April is National Poetry Month! I forget this every year but this year it’s so fitting because at the beginning of the month I wrote my first poem in over seven months. Apparently my muse pays better attention to the calendar than I do. I went into my local library last week and saw a display of "blackout" poetry. (If you do a search for this you'll find some incredibly creative ones. Mine is pretty straightforward.) They encouraged patrons to take a sheet of text (pages cut from books that were damaged or taken out of circulation) and use a marker to circle the words that were wanted and black out those that were unwanted. The end result being a unique poem built from someone else’s prose. Here’s a photo of my final result: Here’s the copied text: You look fine, satisfied, pleased here in this room. Stay. Just don’t leave. Okay? Shaking her head, she hadn’t answered. Said again promise you won’t leave. All right. I promise. Liar. He called, listened for her burying. Couldn’t stand it. His request a slight tremor spoken. Funeral Friday afternoon another ready scheduled Wednesday evening. Over and over. If only I had seen that monster. Wish the fault was the monster but the words… out of his mouth. I did the back side of the page as well, though I didn’t take a picture because - like a dummy - I didn’t realize how badly my marker would bleed through. Here’s the text: Too quickly, pulled out his shield said, “No.” Just watch Justice. The task? To be the first one to know if anything broke. A brother, a part of this hunt, looked to murder, locking up choice. This was a fun exercise. If you’re feeling dull on one of these spring days when the weather seems to want to be contrary to your mood, try it out. You can use a magazine or newspaper page. I think it’d be a great one for finding new inspiration or relieving writer’s block. Sometimes being forced to work with words you might not have chosen can be like finding a brand new color in your crayon box.
Happy Poetry Month!
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