VRZHU bullets of pure love: Snark: The New Poetry Month Poster

So the American Academy of Poets has announced the release of this year's Poetry Month poster.

And it's a snoozer.

As the official press release describes it:

"Red letters set in flight to spell "National Poetry Month" are the centerpiece of this bold poster. The image is anchored by two cupped hands."

"this bold poster"

Really?

Yeah. This is pretty bold.

Bold like the "Got Milk" posters are bold. Bold like the Dakota Fanning says READ posters. Actually, the Dakota Fanning poster is more interesting than this job. Dakota Fanning is at least an interesting person holding up Charlotte's Web and maybe someone out there in the target audience might think, "Wow, if the girl from "Man on Fire" and "War of the Worlds" is into Charlotte's Web, it might be a good read."

I won't even get into the absolute lack of imagination on font-choice on this thing. Let's just consider its express purpose:

How the hell does this inspire someone to go pick up a book of poetry? How the hell does this inspire someone to go hear poetry for that matter. Seriously. This is the tamest, least imaginative advert I've seen in a while. I can only imagine that deference for the lowest common-denominator, least offensive, middling banality was the call since these posters are going to be on the bulletin boards of classrooms across America. But seriously, is this the best they could come up with? This was the work of the folks at "SpotCo", who the press release bills as:

[the] New York City agency responsible for the lion’s share of poster designs for Broadway’s most popular shows. These include RENT, Chicago, and Avenue Q.

I can only imagine ticket sales for "NATIONAL POETRY MONTH" if this were the poster. I'm thinking a very very limited run.

Aesthetically it's such a boring piece of work.

This doesn't have to be. The American Academy has done great work before. Consider last year's poster with a really clever pixilated Whitman. It was both classy and cutting edge. Certainly more interesting then the flyaway letters of this year's effort.

What does this year's poster look like to you?

Here are my ideas:

Help! My letters are floating away!!
Please sir. Can I have some more red letters?
Dismembered hands profit from the Poetry Foundation's novel program of sprinkling letters from zeppelins flying over the city.

Comments

I dunno. The letters kind of look like beet-flavored jigglers, so maybe it’s a nod to Dana Goia from when he had the Jell-O marketing account with Nabisco?

To me this poster says something like “I’m Toby Maguire and beet-flavored jigglers are falling out of the sky into my black and white hands as if this were a product placement outtake from the movie Pleasantville.”

“Hi! I opened my severed hands and alphabetical letters of jellied oxblood flew into the air to spell out, um, A Methanol Pinyon Tort? A Hotplate Tinny Moron? Antimatter Hoop Nylon? Well, anyway, go read poetry.”

And what’s with those weird indentations on the “N” in MONTH? Teethmarks?

And finally I thought the use of the word “stone” in poems had been made illegal by a rider to the Poetry Accessibility Act of 1992. Oh, wait, it rhymes. I think that’s one of the exemptions for use.

Posted by: Michael Gushue | Jan 16, 2008 at 07:14 PM