Just had a weird, lightning strike moment, sitting here at the laundromat. I went in search of a specific writerly thing that may only exist on Tumblr. Though I didn’t find what I sought, I wound up on an article called 12 Author Websites That Get It Right.

As I scrolled, taking note of ideas to apply to my own website, I happened across a screenshot of the webpage for Austin Kleon. I liked it so much that I visited his website itself for a closer look.

After reading a few of his blog posts, I clicked on his books page. Feeling drawn, somehow. The titles were interesting but unfamiliar to me.

Then I landed on this book:

I owned this book, Newspaper Blackout, a long time ago. One of the few I splurged to buy brand new when I was a starving college student (and the first few poems of which I read while on the job working at Barnes & Noble). As Kleon points out on his website, folks often use his books as bathroom readers and mine was no exception. The softback cover got destroyed by the moisture and I eventually had to throw it out.

Though never much of a poetry person myself, I recall enjoying the poems contained within. Likely, as an active artist, I would appreciate them more now. However, Newspaper Blackout did inspire me, several years later, to make my own blackout poetry out of a book I truly despised, but I won’t be saying which one.

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