Smart Copywriting Is Poetry With A Pitch
The best poets magically fit an entire world into a single poem.
When you read “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, “Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats, and “Still I Rise,” by Maya Angelou, you’re set adrift in poetic wonderland. These poems are universal and timeless, and all employ an incredible economy of artful language.
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.-Opening stanza of “Byzantium,” by William Butler Yeats
The western mind wants to figure poetry out. That’s not the point of poetry. Let the language wash over you. Let it take you to a place of redemption and remind you of your connections to all living and loving things.
Poetry is the singular pursuit by a playful wordsmith.
Poets, unlike copywriters, screenwriters, and journalists, don’t have anything to sell. Poets have their point of view to convey, and no clients or anxious team members looking over their shoulders.
Also, poetry is not a capitalized asset and this frees poetry to be something above and beyond the purely commercial. How rare is that today?
