While re-reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s wonderful book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, I came across this passage on working crossword puzzles. I think he could just as well be talking about making blackout poems:
There is much to be said in favor of this popular pastime, which in its best form resembles the ancient riddle contests. It is inexpensive and portable, its challenges can be finely graduated so that both novices and experts can enjoy it, and its solution produces a sense of pleasing order that gives one a satisfying feeling of accomplishment. It provides opportunities to experience a mild state of flow to many people who are stranded in airport lounges, who travel on commuter trains, or who are simply whiling away Sunday mornings.
Csikszentmihalyi then goes on to talk explicitly about poetry and writing:
What’s important is to find at least a line, or a verse, that starts to sing. Sometimes even one word is enough to open a window on a new view of the world, to start the mind on an inner journey….
And the joys of being an amateur (why leave it to professionals?):
Not so long ago, it was acceptable to be an amateur poet….Nowadays if one does not make some money (however pitifully little) out of writing, it’s considered to be a waste of time. It is taken as downright shameful for a man past twenty to indulge in versification unless he receives a check to show for it.
UPDATE (6/30/08): Weird timing: a reader from Tacoma, Washington messaged me and said her local newspaper, The News Tribune, is running a blackout poems contest. (I’ve archived the full text in the comments.)
Of course, they’re probably closer to a Word Search than a Crossword Puzzle…
Two things:
1. As it happens, I did the Sunday crossword yesterday, for the first time in ages. Finished it with the help of J. My guess is that, in her maturity, she will be a Hall of Fame-level crossword puzzler.
2. Re the the second quote:
This goes on my “Instant Monster Classic” list. Amen and amen. The point of reading, of listening, of looking at art, of doing ANY art, is to embark upon journeys that otherwise will never get underway. This is what it means to be an artist of amateur (“love-driven”) motives. Huge.
Tim: Glad you dug that quote. I don’t think I’ve highlighted so many passages in one book!
Floetry.
From THE NEWS TRIBUNE in Tacoma, Washington:
another thing that i would say provides a similarly small but satisfying drop of flow to the everyday consumer is a fortune cookie. although you don’t feel like the mystical words are coming from you, they are directed at you, applicable to your personal life.
You might like the book “writing in flow” by Susan perry, which has a lot on writing poetry in a flow state.
Hey, I was napping and woke up suddenly realizing I’d been mentioned in a blog. Yes, my book Writing in Flow is probably relevant to blackout poems in some slant-rhymey way. By the way, I’ll be doing a regular blog shortly for Psychology Today called “Creating in Flow,” so I’ve just made a note to come back to THIS blog and see what’s up.
Paul Rand on the crossword puzzle: