3 or 4 months ago I did a batch of full-page “broadsheet” newspaper blackout poems — using the entire page of the newsprint. I soon realized they were a lot of work, and I probably couldn’t use them for the book anyways. So I dropped them. I did, however, take the time to scan a couple and found the scans recently on my hard drive. If you click the images below you can read them. I’ve also included a few “in progress” shots.

“On The Day”

* * *

“A Hangover In The Mediterranean”

* * *

“The Curator”

* * *

“Olympic Games”

* * *

It’s funny, looking at these again, I’m reminded of how important size and dimensions are to the success of the poems.

Normal-sized, they’re really easy to read (usually) on one monitor screen. I’ve always tried to make them the size of a paperback book. (Wishful thinking?)

Broadsheet-sized, they’re really hard to get a look at online–they take a long time to load, and you have to do a lot of scrolling.

My guess is that if I’d only worked on full-paged poems, they’d never become as popular as they have. I’m not even sure they’d work well as posters — it’d just be a sea of black hanging on a wall.

No matter!

* * *

In other news, here’s some blackout fan mail that I received the other day from a girl who grew up near me (we’ve never met). It was one of the funniest e-mails I’ve ever received:

I took it as a compliment.

Since I haven’t posted a new blackout poem in a couple months or so since starting on the book, here’s a little treat: my first attempt at blacking out a whole broadsheet. This is the front page of the business section. I’d like to do a series of these, as a break from the regular book work.

FYI: if you’re in the Austin area, I’m planning on showing this and some of the new, never-before-seen poems at the next Austin VizThink gathering on September 9th.