Make a poem from words already on the page
Blackout poetry keeps a few words from a longer passage and covers the rest. The remaining words form a new poem in their original reading order. Start with your own paragraph, a passage you have permission to reuse, or the short example shown above. This editor does not invent lines or choose words for you. You decide what stays visible, including punctuation, before creating the finished image.
Select, read, and revise
Click or tap words and punctuation to black out. Yellow words turn black in the result; unmarked words stay visible. Use arrow keys to move, Space or Enter to select. Click a yellow word again to leave it visible. Read the unmarked words in their original order. Undo and Redo restore both the source and its selection.
Example: find a short sentence
Leave the words you want to keep unmarked and select all the others to black out. Try the original example: “Morning opens a small window. Beyond the noise, we carry quiet light home.” Keep Morning, we, carry, light, and home. Reading the kept words gives “Morning we carry light home.” Create the blackout to see how the covered words shape the page. Then unselect quiet to keep it as well and create it again. This small change adds a different feeling without adding any new words to the source.
Example: use the line break
Leave the words you want to keep unmarked and select all the others to black out. Paste two lines: “The garden holds a thousand sounds.” and “At dusk I listen for rain.” Keep garden and sounds on the first line, then I, listen, and rain on the second. The line break separates two thoughts in the image. Punctuation is selectable too: keep the final period if you want it visible. A long line wraps to the image width, while existing line breaks and blank lines remain part of the composition.
Save the image or print a copy
Choose Create blackout after editing, then inspect the actual image in the result area. Save PNG downloads that image without the surrounding editor. Print opens your browser’s print flow with the same artwork fitted to a single A4 sheet. Long poems print smaller, so a shorter source often gives clearer lettering. Changing the source, selection, or history removes the previous image and disables its export buttons; create it again before saving.
Why did the example disappear?
The example is real editable text with a matching selection. Focusing its text box clears both so you can enter your own passage. Leaving the box empty restores the example; this works each time. Once you select or deselect an example word, it becomes your work and is no longer cleared on focus. Clear returns to the example, and Undo can recover the previous editing state while this tab stays open.
What happens when I change the source?
Selections in unchanged text before and after the edited passage are retained when they can be matched safely. Words inside a replaced passage may need selecting again. Review the highlighted words after any text edit. Text and selection are saved together in this browser, so reloading can restore your draft. Undo history and the exported image are not stored. Storage may be unavailable in private browsing or when browser settings restrict it.
What are the text and image limits?
Use up to 6,000 characters and 1,600 selectable text parts. The image is 1,080 pixels wide and at most 8,192 pixels tall. Excessive blank lines can reach the height limit even with a short passage. Very long words wrap rather than running outside the image. Fonts and word boundaries depend on the browser, especially for languages without spaces. This tool starts from plain text; it cannot import a scanned page, PDF, or photographed book.
Does the saved image hide my original text?
Covered words become solid pixels in the PNG, but your editable source remains in the local draft. Blackout poetry is an art activity, not a document redaction workflow. Review the kept words and the image before sharing. The source is processed in this browser; it is not uploaded by this editor. Saving a PNG does not automatically publish it anywhere. Keep a separate copy of source text that you want to preserve.