I made you some poems

A day of comfort work

Hey y’all,

Yesterday I was in need of some comfort work, so I made some blackout poems for you. You’re the first people to see these. (And maybe the only people who will see them!)

I was partly inspired by Kevin Slick, an art teacher in Erie, Colorado, who runs the @erieelemart instagram. (Dig their found poetry!) Mr. Slick has been posting some “just my opinion” reels about his thoughts on education in anticipation of his retirement. His latest is about how important it is that teachers need to keep up with their practice.

This is something I think about a lot and something I tell art teachers when I get a chance to speak to them. All of my books were written by someone trying to make art, not someone trying to write books about making art! It’s very important to me to be someone who makes things, not just someone who talks about making things. Skin in the game…

I was also inspired by some kind words about my blackout work from Marc Weidenbaum. (Whenever somebody says something nice about the blackouts, I think, “Oh, maybe I should make some more of those.”) Marc was interested in the source material for the poem he shared, and I had to admit to him, “I don’t ‘read’ the article first when I make these — I try to think of them as a raw field of words, like a word search puzzle.” (Almost every blackout I make is from the Sunday print edition of The New York Times — the ones in this email are all from the August 28, 2022 issue.)