I got really into doing erasure/blackout poems in July. I’d never tried them before really, but I was doing a 30-poems-in-30-days challenge with some friends, and wanted to participate more days of the month than not—but I didn’t have the poetry-emergy-wherewithal to write from scratch everyday. Blackout poems, I discovered, were a really fun and rewarding way to still participate in the making of poetry without having the burden of the totally blank page.

I’ve gotten quite into it, and have some larger erasure projects in mind for the winter when being outside isn’t so tempting. But in the meantime, I’m thoroughly enjoying the occasional foray of taking a Sharpie to a magazine. Entertainment Weekly is surprisingly fecund (though Us Weekly is not), and Money Magazine, Elle Decor, Architectural Digest and House Beautiful work well. The New Yorker’s vocabulary of course makes it a fantastic source too (and now I finally know what to do with all those years-old New Yorkers I am never going to get around to reading!). But the most fun was definitely the night I used the King County Voters pamphlet.

Here are a few of the ones I did in July that I like best. (Click on the images to see them larger). Enjoy!