B - Blackout Poetry Form - Now Dust

Blackout poetry is a form of Found poetry, also known as erasure or redacted poetry.  It begins with text by another author, be it poem, prose, newspaper article, whatever you may have on hand works. 

Read though the text, noting words you want to keep, then go back and literally blackout the rest.  The words left will form your poem. 

Blackout poetry is quite popular on social media these days, however, it's been around a long time, more than 250 years!  The earliest examples were written by a neighbor of Benjamin Franklin, Caleb Whiteford, who published broadsheets (sheets printed on one side) with puns and poems "found" in the newspapers.  Print newspapers were a new thing themselves in those days.

My Blackout poem was found in Edna St. Vincent Millay's Autumn Chant.  Her original follows my Blackout.  

Now Dust 

Now the autumn shudders
In the rose's root,
Far and wide the ladders
Lean among the fruit.

Now the autumn clambers
Up the trellised frame
And the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.

Brighter than the blossom
On the rose's bough
Sits the wizened, orange,
Bitter berry now;

Beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came

©2022 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved

 

Autumn Chant 

by Edna St. Vincent Millay 

 Now the autumn shudders
In the rose's root,
Far and wide the ladders
Lean among the fruit.

Now the autumn clambers
Up the trellised frame
And the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.

Brighter than the blossom
On the rose's bough
Sits the wizened, orange,
Bitter berry now;

Beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.