Day 2 in "30 Days of Blogging"

Day 2: the meaning behind your blog name

When I originally thought of what I was going to write for this post, it was going to be simple. But then I did some research (shocker).

I got the name from an advertisement I saw for liquor a long time ago. It had the tagline "and they say poetry is dead", insinuating that poetry lived on through their liquor.

The tag line stuck in my head for some reason - the way the words were strung together and the connotation that many people do believe that poetry is dead. It was especially poignant because at the time, I spent a good part of my days reading and analyzing poetry, so it was very "undead" to me.

As I was explaining the story to Matt yesterday, he started looking for the advertisement. And then through the wonder of the google machine, there it was (or at least a variation of it).

Kind of silly right? The funniest thing is that the reason we could find the image was that people absolutely hated the ad. The white space! The copy text! They ranted and raved, but thanks to them, there it was.

The final piece of irony in all of this researching, I found an online journal called Poetry is Dead which is actually centered in Vancouver! Their main goal is to keep poetry from actually dying. I scrolled down to read some articles, and there was this fantastic essay from a couple weeks ago about poetry's death. One of the main reasons cited:

Advertising.

Poetry is not linked to economic gain, or dollar values. It is about slow reflection and savoring words in detail. That process isn't really valued in our social media, twitter-paited, 30 second clip culture.

And I got my title from an advertisement and I used it because of how much I love poetry.

What lovely irony. Almost poetic even.