For my third assignment, I did the Newspaper Blackout Poetry, worth 3 stars.

Here’s the image:

The poem reads:

“sacred representations”

murders

attempted murder

confused, angry and fearful

feel sacred figures

ubiquity of sacred images

t-shirts and bumper stickers

deadly

the path was settled

the creation to be a violation

scratched out

marched on

cross-examined

feared, warned, compelled

infallibility

waged war

burned and dismembered

defecated

avoided depicting

Washington

holy and sacred

George Washington

sacred duty

become commonplace

children

resistance

Hollywood

nothing short of blasphemy

constant source of conflict

That’s a damned lie!

violence painted

uproars

crucifix, submerged

a crusade

vaginas surrounding her

elephant dung was smeared

displayed

caused mass violence

intense conflict

a culture supersaturated

largely without violence

I think the hardest part for me was finding the right article. This one came out of the Thursday issue of the New York Times. It was about religion, which I knew would have great phrases. It was also hard to black out certain phrases and leave others, since I was using a sharpie. I just picked out phrases or words that stood out to me and then had a few people read through it to make sure it made somewhat sense (although the power of poetry is that it doesn’t always make sense.) I went with my first instincts and actually really liked the finished product. I will probably do this exercise again.

PS: my poem, because of the length of the article I chose, ended up pretty long. I don’t mind, but when choosing an article it may help to focus on shorter articles or blurbs.