When Austin Kleon grabbed a newspaper and a Sharpie one dull day in Cleveland, he had no idea that his blackout poetry would soon become an Internet phenomenon. Three years later, his costume jewelry became the sixth best-selling poetry book of 2010. Now its all fun and games for this writer who draws.”Recently, Fiction Editor David Duhr met Kleon and his wife Meghan at an Austin watering hole, where they chatted about cutups, mashups, the avant-garde, and how some art—like the Ramones—is deceptively simple. So, the #6 best-selling poetry book of 2010.(Laughs) I think that it doesnt take a lot to get on the poetry bestseller list.Good point.I have friends in publishing that are like, If youre on any list, be thrilled.” And I am. But its a relative thing. Poetry sales are so relatively low.How did you get started with blackout poetry?I was about 22, right out of undergrad, and I was trying to be a short story writer. Short stories are what they teach you to write in college—Sometimes the only thing they teach you to write.Right. But when I got out of school I didnt have an audience anymore.In the meantime I was kind of rediscovering my love of drawing and we happened to have this surplus of newspapers lying around the apartment. So one day I just picked up one of the markers I draw with and started playing.At the same time I was discovering blogging.And basically they were a lark and I only did like a dozen of them and I quit for a year, and what happened was a few people on the internet found them and reblogged them and all the sudden I thought, Oh shit, I should probably do some more of these.”So it didnt wow you at first.At first I thought it was just a total side thing, just a writing exercise. It wasnt until we moved down here at the end of 2007 when everything blew up.How did that happen?costume jewelry is probably who I owe my whole career to. He picked them up, and he just has such an insane fan base that he gets so many eyeballs on you. An NPR Morning Edition producer saw the poems, and she called me and said We want to do a 20-second segment—how do you pronounce your name?” (Laughs) Then the next morning, were driving to work and we hear it on NPR, which was crazy. After that I heard from my editor at HarperCollins.I thought wed have an intro about the history of the technique, and then the meat of the book will be the poems, and the end will be an invitation for people to try their own.Thats one of the things I really like here, your Anybody can do this” mentality.My favorite artists, thats just the way they operate. Theyre not like magicians, theyre not afraid to show their tricks. The bottom line is everyone can do it, but not everyone can do it well. Ive been asked before, Are you worried about someone being better than you?” Well, you know, if someones done like 1,000 blackout poems, if someone wants to put that much time into it to get that good at it, please be my guest.Earlier this year Tumblr released this feature where you can submit posts. So suddenly people could upload their own poem, and I could go through and say This ones good, lets publish this one.” So right before the book release we started this costume jewelry thats just taken off like crazy.What makes a good one?They have to be readable. You still have to operate on the rules of how people read. So for instance its really important that people can read them left to right, top to bottom, and that theres a flow. If you want to use a word thats out of place, one of the tricks I use is to create these little rivers between words, and thats something I stole from Tom Phillips, the guy who did costume jewelry.What Tom Phillips does is fine art. Its really beautiful and colorful, and theres obviously a painters hand in it, so I always think of Humument as like Sergeant Peppers—people listen to Sergeant Peppers and theyre like Oh my god this is amazing, how can anyone do this?” I always think of newspaper blackouts as the Ramones. You hear the Ramones and want to start a band. But the Ramones are deceptively simple. They still wrote brilliant songs, and not everyone can be them.Its tricky though because you have these notions of what makes a poem good.” Its really dependent on media, because on the Internet whats good is something thats very immediate and very visual. The poems that go over well on the Internet are probably only 10-20 words long.You only use the New York Times, right?Thats the paper weve always subscribed to. But on a practical level, the typography on the Times is really good, its got that classic look and theres a lot of fucking words in it. Everyone kinda laughs when I say that, but its hard nowadays to find a newspaper that has a ton of words.And the Times might be one of the last to go away.Thats the other thing. If youre thinking about future-proofing it, thats the one thatll probably be the last to go.Otherwise I think all the rules of poetry apply. Images. I always think of that line in costume jewelry” when Ginsberg says, Shopping for images.” Youre looking for that image that puts something in someones mind. That appeals to me because Im a visual artist.But despite the form, theres not really any abstract poetry here. I always respond to the more narrative kind. Whats fun for me is taking this avant-garde technique and trying to make something fairly traditional out of it. Something you can send your grandma. Or your mom, maybe. Maybe not your grandma.Meghan, we learn in the afterword that you found a narrative in here where Austin hadnt seen one before.(Meghan) Once he was done with the bulk of the poems he printed them out, four to a standard sheet of paper. They were almost like playing cards, but he was so intensely involved in the creation of the poems that he couldnt really come up with an order to put them in.(Austin) Because it wasnt a collection. I wanted everything in the book to be new.(Meghan) And I think that was hard for you, because you were so used to having immediate feedback.Right, This ones good, this one …”Yeah, you can kinda tell whats really resonating with people. It wouldve been a hell of a lot easier to just do a collection.I like that you said they were playing cards, Meg, because I really did think of that as card-sorting. We have these really funny pictures of us with all of these poems spread out all over the office.When we were finishing up the book wed just moved into our new house, so we finally had a space where we could—(Meghan) And we didnt have any furniture yet—(Austin) The room was just blackout poems everywhere. It was wild. That was a wild end of the year.But there are definitely themes. You start with childhood and memory, then love and sex, a bit of politics and religion.I wanted it to—Some UFOs.(Laughs) Once Meghan picked up on that, I saw it too. Its really like making an album and trying to come up with the words. Ive heard it said that its really hard to escape doing a coming-of-age book, just because youve got all this stuff up until that point. I think its a coming-of-age book.It was weird to go from being someone who published everything online and got instant gratification from readers to all of a sudden youve got this book, this object, and its just out there and you have no idea whats going on with it.How do the poems translate to the e format?There was an article in the Times today about how the displays are getting better for the e-readers, and theyre finally at a point where I think they can handle this.So you read the article, you didnt black it out?(Laughs) Yeah, I dont always black them out. But I dont own the rights to the book, HarperCollins does, so they have to decide whether theyre going to publish it or not as an ebook. But Id love to see it as an ebook.If presented with the original articles, do you think you could discern which poem each one led to?Probably not, because some of them arent even an actual article. The Times is really great because two columns is the width of a paperback, and the width of a blog column, so it worked really well. So sometimes I would use one column from one article and one column from another.Do you make copies of the articles first?No. I probably should.(M) There would be less cursing.(A) Definitely less cursing.Thats what I was wondering, what happens if theres an error? The poems just out the window?It just sucks.There are no drafts?There arent any drafts. But I dont black everything out right away. I make boxes around words, Ill put little dots next to words. I wont do the full blacking out until Im ready to go.So you dont just start blacking out and then stop when a word interests you. You map it out beforehand.I basically figure out the canvas first. This is where the poem is going to happen and then I just start going around looking for combinations.Do you hang onto the originals? As souvenirs?Theres been interest in the originals. Ive been really loath to sell them, because theyre going to deteriorate, and I havent really figured out a good way to preserve them. We sell fine art prints of them, but I dont want to sell someone something thats not going to last. Youd be surprised at how many people want an original. Im like, Really?”Yeah. Buy an original and then watch it yellow and curl up at the edges.(M) Sharpie on newsprint is like the least archival safe material.(A) I should start using archival markers.Would it be fair to say that this is akin to an art book thats made up of photocopies of paintings?I think its just as much of an art book as a poetry book.So are you a writer or an artist?Usually I steal Sol Steinbergs term for himself. He said, Im a writer who draws.” Im just a writer and an artist. Its a simple thing. Just a writer and an artist.Art with words in it, thats pretty much what I do.How much time does it take to make a blackout poem?Anywhere from ten minutes to a half hour. Sometimes I put them away and then bring them back out, and then they take even longer. I hate to say it, but the best ones come in like five minutes, where its just like boom.”Do you have an obligation to put out a few a week for your followers?Thats a good question. I would feel weird if I was just, Im not doing it anymore. Retirement.” One of the things that kind of alleviates that pressure for me on the blog is the fact that I can post something every day from someone else. If I dont post something in a week I feel really guilty. Even though it doesnt matter.How do readings work? I usually do a slideshow, and then we just make poems. I bring newspaper and markers.You turn it into a how-to?And it works really well. Its very rare that adults are in a situation where someone hands you materials and says, Make something!” Well do that for kids all the time, but no adults ever get that. So if youre in a roomful of adults and say, Hey, I brought these school supplies”—Its playtime.”Yeah, its playtime. Its amazing to see who gets into it.I dont think its completely altruistic behavior. If you inspire people to make things, it just makes them love you all the more. I think more good artists would benefit by being more open and encouraging people to make things. I just think that theres so much untapped creativity in peoples lives—so few of us make anything with our hands, or do things remotely creative these days.Page 151: Any idiot can do what I do.”I made that poem and thought, Itd be really funny if we stuck that towards the end, because thats where its headed.”Pablo Picasso: Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”I have a whole collection of costume jewelry. Everything from Picasso to someone like Chuck Palahniuk, who said Im just a mashup of everything Ive read and everyone Ive bumped into.”So who are you a mashup of?I love Vonnegut, probably because of the Midwest thing. I really like Charles Schultz and Lynda Berry. George Saunders is great. Probably music, too. Someone like Bill Callahan here in town, hes one of my favorite songwriters.I think on the whole I conceived of this book as cutups meet the Midwest. Its poems about being a kid from the Midwest, with this weird cutup method. Thats the mashup.Were you a nerd in high school?A nerd in high school?Youre the narrator of these poems.Yeah.I mean, you have lots of pieces about bullying, taking frustrations out on the tetherball, the humiliating shit that happens in locker rooms.I grew up in a really small town where if you were remotely artistic or different you were kind of an outcast, which I think is fairly universal in a small town.Yeah, I was a nerd in high school. I was valedictorian.I feel like Im best when Im writing about … honestly I consider myself more of a love poet, if you can be that. I mean, human relationships are what fascinate me on a basic level. Family, your wife.So whats next for you? Will you continue to experiment with different forms?Id really like to attempt more visual books, something thats really wacky. But Im not sure its going to be a book, actually. I have a project right now thats about art and marriage, but Im not really ready to talk about it yet.This is a fun time for me because Ive got the poems and theyre not going away. I make a few poems every week, and then the rest of the time I can work on what I want to. Its a good time. Its like playtime for me.