bs2Mar 19, 2023
"Why is there so much bullshit?"
- Harry Frankfurt
> The copy-writer is immeasurably more restricted in his choice of subject-matter than a court poet ever was. Moreover, the merit of his poetry is not measured by the pleasure it gives a single patron; it is measured by its influence on sales statistics. Like the court poet, the copy-writer must praise not only his patron, but also the entire socio-economic system which keeps his patron rich and powerful.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=59891
#SIHayakawa
Poetry and Advertising by S. Ichiye Hayakawa | Poetry Magazine

January 1946 | Edith Wyatt, John Ciardi, John Hay, Cecil Hemley, Richard Moore, Howard Moss, Herman Salinger, James Schevill, Marion Strobel, Richard Eberhart, Francis Golffing, H. Hays, John Healy, Theodore Roethke, Winfield Scott, Ray Smith

Poetry Magazine
Show threadbs2Mar 19, 2023
> Milton was eloquent in his contempt for the “trencher fury of the riming parasite.” A contemporary prophet able to look into the twentieth century might well have said to him, “You haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until you see the institutional ads of the great corporations during World War II!”
https://diasp.eu/posts/8146170
#PoetryAndAdvertising #Poetry #SymbolDrain #Insignificancy #PR #Propaganda #Milton on #Advertising
Venal symbol draining raises the tide of insignificancy: advertisin...

Venal symbol draining raises the tide of insignificancy: advertising. Neil Postman's Technopoly elaborates the idea that "the dissemination of semantic wisdom … can be equally well given by departments of history, political science, chemistry, English, or home economics … ". S.I. Hayakawa's supports and extends Richards' point: "… great words … have become suspect: so that when people hear or see them they assume they are being got at? Where these words are no longer understood, men no longer understand themselves." (IaR) Following up with Yeats you wonder who you would allow to "make and unmake"(Yeats) us… Poetry and Advertising (1946) by S.I. Hayakawa One does not often mention poetry and advertising in the same breath. Poetry is universally conceded to be the loftiest attainment of the verbal arts; its merits are attested to by the wise of all ages. Advertising, on the other hand, is not even an autonomous art; it is the handmaiden of commerci...

diaspora* social network
Show threadbs2
Why so much bullshit? Money?
> The characteristic work of the novel is to record the illusion that snobbery generates and to try to penetrate to the truth which, as the novel assumes, lies hidden beneath all the false appearances. #Money, #Snobbery the ideal of status, these become in themselves the objects of fantasy, the support of the fantasies of love, freedom, charm, power...
#LionelTrilling in the book, The #MoralObligation #ToBeIntelligent, essay,
#MannersMorals And #TheNovel
Mar 20, 2023 at 7:59amWeb
Show threadbs2Mar 20, 2023
> Snobbery is pride in status without pride in function. And it is an uneasy pride of status. It always asks, “Do I belong—do I really belong? And does he belong? And if I am observed talking to him, will it make me seem to belong or not to belong?” It is the peculiar vice.. of bourgeois democratic societies...
#LionelTrilling on #Snobbery