Poem of the Month

 

Two “Blackout” Poems

 

Roman Sympos

 

 

Fire, then Ice

​

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

                            --Robert Frost

​

Abruptly brewing, the earth—

pansexual, terrified daughter, a poet—

anticipated a beautiful, enormous, stray

husband.

 

Blood, figuring, cooled.

Greek sky dispersed, gleefully.

 

Fabric misattribution, formulation--

portrait among

inevitable

tomorrows.

 

New York Review of Books, “Out of the Rubble,” August 20, 2026

 

 

Letting Go

 

That dull—benumbing time
There is in Fever or Event—

                              Emily Dickinson

​

Fever flopped down

nowhere.

Troubled relatives, estranged, discrediting,

suspected theatrical deflating,

obedient hypnotist dreaming

improvisations.

 

New York Review of Books, “A Gust From Another World,” August 20, 2026

 

 

Note to Readers:

 

These two poems were composed using the “blackout” method taught me by my good friend Lee Brami.  

 

Here’s how it works.

 

Choose any paragraph of printed prose in a newspaper or magazine and read it through with a fine-point magic marker in hand, blacking out each line as you read until you come to a random word that you find interesting. Circle that word and continue in the same way until you reach the end of the paragraph—the longer the better. Then take the random words you’ve circled and try to make a poem out of them.

 

There are no strict rules on how to do this. You can rearrange your words, add to them, punctuate as you like. I composed these two poems by reading my chosen paragraphs in reverse. (My sources appear at the end of each poem.) However, I composed them by arranging the words I chose in the order they were originally written in. Nothing’s been added but punctuation, line breaks, and, crucially, titles and epigraphs.

 

Do they make sense? Or is the sense they make equal to the sense you take? Are they poems? Or Ouija boards? Or Rorschach tests in verse? You tell me.