Profit from poetry: Bards, brands, and burnished bottom lines

A poet, Wallace Stevens once said, makes silk dresses out of worms. What the great American modernist didn’t reveal is the brand of silk dresses that worms weave so well. This article takes up where Stevens left off. It identifies the ways in which corporations can profit from poetry. It examines the fractious yet fruitful relationship between bards and brands. It notes the business background of several big, brand-name poets. And, illuminated by a recent instance of haiku hacktivism, it argues that poetry is an apt metaphor for branding in today's texting, tweeting, crowdsourced, co-created, there's-an-app-for-that world. Despite Stevens’ subsequent contention that money is a kind of poetry, the article concludes that marketing's case is stronger still.