💡 Power cut 🧠 Loss of memory 🌑 Lights turned off 📺 Broadcast stopped ✍️ Erased poem

blackout

1 8.4

A poem made by covering most words on a page so the words left form a new poem

noun
/ˈblækˌaʊt/

Literature

: poema de borrado

NATHAN: Honey, this is a blackout.

Examples

The artist created a stunning blackout poem by transforming old newspaper articles into a new work of art.
He proudly displayed his blackout poem at the local coffee shop, showcasing the beauty of erasure poetry.
Hmm, let's see: 421: The Day After, Blackout!

Blog text (10)
Britney never speaks about Blackout.

Blog text (19)
And what would I do with them in a small rented room in which shreds of blackout paper were still hanging along the windows and where in the narrow table drawer there was room for just a few dinner things?

Fiction book (1990)
In her workshop, participants learned how to compose a blackout poem using words from discarded books.

Surface Forms

blackout singular

blackouts plural

Morphology

blackout = black (transparent) = out + black

The poetic practice literally involves 'blacking out' words, so the compound directly describes the action. [Postprocessing: moved 'out' from base_words to prefix]

Etymology

Blackout in 'blackout poetry' is very literal: you actually 'black out' most words on a page, leaving a few words to form a new poem. That is why the name comes from making parts of the page dark to reveal a new text.