Monday, November 17, 2008

Poetry and Packaging




As a petite literary experiment, I typed "poetry" into my google news search bar and was really surprised by my results.  

The very first result was about a small Canadian winery, Southbrook Vineyard is launching a line of wines with poetry on the labels.


11 Canadian poets will be featured on the labels of this limited lin
e of vintage wines.  Plastering poetry on a wine bottle is a pleasant surprise and a sensible combination.  Poetry and wine seem compatible (the abundance of poetic invocations of Dionysus alone demonstrate the leap is not to grand); the link of poetry next marketing scheme I happened upon (the fifth result of my google query), seems a little more tenuous.


Apparently McDonald's is redesigning its packaging to include storytelling!

Can you imagine Yeats on your Big Mac or Ginsberg on your fries?  I'm all for the inclusion of poetry in the public sphere and increasing exposure to
 literature (even if as a byproduct of mass consumption), but I'm skeptical of the conflation of fast food with literary language.

I'm anxious to see the stories told as poetry moves to the vine and to the deep fry line!

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