Instead of starting with a blank page, poet Austin Kleon grabs the New York Times and a permanent marker and eliminates the words he doesn’t need.— NPR’s Morning Edition

[The poems] resurrect the newspaper when everyone else is declaring it dead…like a cross between magnetic refrigerator poetry and enigmatic ransom notes, funny and zen-like, collages of found art…—The New Yorker

Highbrow/brilliant…It’s better than it sounds.—New York Magazine

…a kind of Rorschach approach to reading newspapers…—The Wall Street Journal

Sort of like Michelangelo carving away the marble that imprisoned what he saw within.—Cleveland Plain Dealer

…hidden bits of Zen lite that occasionally bump up against brilliance….Kleon manages to turn the paper of record into visually stark nuggets of poetry and wit. All the Muse That’s Fit to Print, you might say.—Texas Monthly

Turns out Richard Nixon wasn’t our nation’s most gifted redactor.—Time Out Chicago

[A] sense of play infuses the poems—short pieces that touch on first sex and outer space, in a voice that slips from funny to elegiac…—The Austin Chronicle

The poems range from the apocalyptic to teen lust to just plain funny.—The Oklahoman

It’s a very fun read that, with its spare and staccatoed lines, looks more like Sappho’s fragments than any contemporary poems, but with a playful intentionality that can make laughter or tears equally reasonable reactions.—The Austin American-Statesman

One can imagine taking up blackout poetry on their daily bus commute in place of sudoku or the crossword puzzle.—Toronto’s National Post

…pieces that work exceptionally well both as poetry and works of art….one of the year’s most striking (and often surprising) books.—David Gutowski, largeheartedboy.com

Kleon’s sensitive eye, and ear, make these word-sculptures far more than a stunt: to me they read as tiny voices, crying out for release from the clutches of the Old Gray Lady.—Fifty-Two Stories

…like classified document haiku…—John Scalzi

Kleon isn’t a Dadaist and he meticulously draws meaning out of existing newspaper articles on purpose.—Kitsune Noir

The technique of “finding” a hidden text within a text is not new, as Austin will tell you, but his approach is. He has liberated it from the left-field manifestoes and postmodern posturing which have usually accompanied it, and has created work which is direct and accessible. These poems are as sweet, poignant, evocative, and funny as anything written by the “traditional” method, and definitely worth reading. One might even find them addictive.—Drew Dernavich

The amazing thing is that the poems are exquisite. Some are funny, some are ironic, some are moving, some are deep….poetry about love, children, teenagers, relationships, drummers, Cleveland, and the universe….This is a thought-provoking, fun, and inspirational book that will bring out the poet in you, if you’ll only let it.”—Blogcritics.org

If you have been looking, as I have, for an insight into modern America that is not just paying lip-service to that nation’s great writers, then you could do worse than to begin here with this unusual book…—Hand + Star

Some of the results are hilarious, some are profound and even unsettling, but they are never bland or boring.—The Ephemerist

Part “writing with constrictions,” part happy accident, part found art, part design challenge…the collection…gives a well rounded and consistent view into a guy most of us would want to buy a beer. —Radio Exile