Newspaper + Marker = Poetry. Buy the book.
After I posted Tuesday’s newsletter about how I hit an “invisible wall” at the edge of a map of my understanding, I came across these two familiar quotes:
1. “A map is not the territory.”
—Alfred Korzybski (via the comments)
2. “It’s not down in any map; true places never are.”
—Melville, Moby-Dick (misquoted in Bob Dylan’s Nobel lecture)
Filed under: maps
In today’s newsletter, I demonstrate how I use a dry erase marker and a transparency sheet to make poems like this one:
I made this blackout after observing my wife teach my kids math out of a workbook that uses techniques that confuse our Elder Millennial brains. Here’s a decent explanation for why Common Core math problems look so weird:
I made this one in 2016. (Draw a picture of Batman! Everyone can be Batman!)
This weird little book turned 10 years old this month. Kind of hard to believe. I made most of the poems on the bus to work and on my lunch break at my office job. Years ago I thought for sure it would probably be remaindered and go out-of-print. And yet, it’s still around after a decade. (Perhaps even more amazingly, I get a modest check for it once in a while…)
A few years ago I wrote about what I’ve learned from a decade of publishing. Not much to add to that, except:
1) Make sure when you publish a book you think you can live with it for a while.
2) Try to write books you want to read, yes, but also, if you can, ones only you can write.
3) Have a little fun with it, if you can.
There really is nothing like that first book…
RIP Luke Perry. I made this poem back in 2014. Burroughs was convinced that the cut-ups were a form of time travel, and the longer I make them, the less crazy he sounds…
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