Levis pulls riot ad and classic poetry used to sell jeans

I love when poetry take center stage. I love when words written many years ago still ring true, generations later. I love when a poetic classic is made relevant again, even if it's for commercial purposes...but I cant say that I loved this new Levis ad. There is just so much wrong with it...

And just as past campaigns have relied on the words of phttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifoets such as Walt Whitman, “Legacy” enlists the Charles Bukowski poem “The Laughing Heart” as a call to arms. Read by a narrator with a grizzled voice (not unlike Tom Waits), Bukowski’s words are instantly transformed into ad copy, becoming a lyrical ode to the art of jeans selection, boiling away the author’s artful intent and recontextualizing it as a sales pitch.

“Legacy” marries protest imagery, emotive music, and the words of a literary underdog in an attempt to realize Wieden + Kennedy’s vision of high commercial art.

- source Forbes.com



the laughing heart
BY Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.