04 September 2006

Imagine it. Discover it. (TM)

I was reading about how in Kansas City, you can live, work, eat, and conduct your social existence all within the headquarters of Hallmark Cards. I don’t know what the occupancy rate of this place is but someone decided this is what people wanted.

Here you don’t need to write poems, because Hallmark already has poems for every occasion and emotion! And what verbal contrivance of ironic detachment can rival the stated fact that you live and work in the Hallmark Cards HQ? What purer commentary on the myth of America? But keep the poems coming, folks, please.

4 comments:

Ian Keenan said...

+ if you even say anything about it, people say ‘yadda yadda, that was Trotsky’s perception of the role of art, just like Soviet-era kitsch,’ so you just go back into the Crown Center and be happy.

And is there a Hallmark Eviction Notice?

david raphael israel said...

Ian,
this rather arresting rumination of yours occasioned my lyric ditty on the topic. I would not go so far as to say the latter is sheerly satirical; but maybe it's about as satirical as my ditties manage to get. (I lack a satire-o-meter and admittedly can't calibrate myself out of a paper bag.)

david raphael israel said...

um -- added a 2nd poem (vis-a-vis the Hallmark Eviction Notice), which I fear has plain fallen off the far end of the satire-o-meter scale. (This is uncharted territory for me; I'll have to crawl my way back.)

kevin.thurston said...

i'd work for hallmark in an instant