A Blackout Knockout

As editor of The Gateway Gardener, I don’t get as many unsolicited contributions as, say, the editor of the New Yorker Magazine, and when I do, they often— how best to say it— don’t move the needle for me. This one, however, pushed the needle off the register. Submitted by Gateway Gardener reader Mary Schanuel, of Wentzville, MO, it is a “blackout poem” based on a Scott Woodbury article, “Wilding the Home Garden”, published in our April 2022 edition. Being an out- of-it septuagenarian, I had to Google “Blackout Poetry”. Simply, as the photo of the article Mary worked with illustrates, the poet takes an existing work, blacks out the unwanted words, leaving the desired words, and using them, usually in order of appearance, to create a new poem. I not only thought the process was clever, but the finished poem was quite beautiful. Thank you for sharing, Mary! I hope our readers will have the same response—Ed.

by Mary Schanuel

Take a yard wild. No bushes, no lawn, no oval pears.

Wildflowers dominate, grow wide, flirt with the sidewalk.

Grow dense in spring. Dried seed heads and grass stand through winter in tall stubble.

Beetles, bugs, butterflies bees and hoppers, luna moths, wooly bear caterpillars. Holes in leaves.

A plant reaching, tapping: Hey human, slow down Enjoy. Say thanks.

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