Some scholars say that poetry is “no longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life,” and poets only “command a certain residual prestige like priests in a town of agnostics” (Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter 2). They even fear that it will not take long before they will witness the construction of museums in which poetry-related materials are exhibited as rare collections like extinct dinosaurs. In contrast to this dismal skepticism about the fate of poetry in contemporary society, there exists an optimistic view that “masses of people listen to poems, buy them, read them, consume them, and seem to enjoy them to the full.” According to Mike Chasar in his Everyday Reading, in a modern America fueled by consumer capitalism and new media and communication formats, poetry has tens of millions of readers (6). The reason why these contrasting views on poetry exist together is obvious. When we focus on only how poetry is circulated in academic fields or through literary journals, poetry is undeniably endangered. Canonical and ideal poetry is read only by a few well-trained experts in college and new collections by poets are reviewed by closed circles of other poets and critics or never reviewed at all. However, if we extend the scope of poetry to include popular poems consumed and circulated outside academic circles as Chasar suggests, we cannot say that we live in a world where poetry is dead. We meet many poems every day in lyrics of popular songs, greeting cards, and even advertising copies. In recent years, the use of poetry in advertising has been on the rise. McDonald's uses rhymed lines for advertising, and Waitrose, a chain of British supermarkets, quotes “To Autumn” by John Keats in its TV commercial. W. H. Davies’ “Leisure” is used for advertising Centre Park, a European network of holiday villages, and there are commercials using the poems of Dylan Thomas, Amelia Barr, Charles Bukowski, e. e. cummings, and William Blake, to take a few examples. Considering a popular belief that poetry is not compatible with money, the increasing use of poetry in the advertising industry which is an integral cog in the machine of consumer capitalism can be puzzling to poets as well as readers, because poverty has always been a repeating motif for poets throughout the ages. According to David Blackburn, an editor of a creative editorial company named PS260, viewers “are now seeing poetry used in commercial storytelling because they are wise to conventional advertising and are bombarded by it, so they have developed ways to filter it out.” He also adds, “poetry is more entertaining than most ad copy, and viewers are inclined to respond to a lifestyle or feeling rather than a hard sell”(https://www.adweek.com/ brand-marketing/why-brands-are-using-poetry-to-cut-through-the-noise-and-grab-viewers-attention/) . To sum up, poetry is a more effective means of advertising than typical ad copies since it appeals to feelings of consumers. Among various cases of commercials using poems, this study will examine how Walt Whitman’s canonical poems are appropriated by Apple, Levi's, and Volvo, and what advertising effects these brands probably expect from his poems.
