Poetry # 1

1.This poem that Levi used without mention of the author, came from the poem titled "The Laughing Heart" and it was written by Charles Bukowski.

2.The ironic part of the pants brand using a poem about using the poem is embedded in their meaning of the commercial itself. The poem talks about living your life your way, and choosing to beat the obstacles and defeats that you may be feeling and experiencing. In reality the Levis Corporation was trying to use this poem to persuade the potential consumers to buy their product.

3. From information found on a website (www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-bukowski ) Charles Bukowski has a reputation of talking about what no one else wants to talk about. In fact when researching him more I came across a poem titled " A Not so Good Night in the San Pedro of the World" (linked to the blog) talks of a dark time when a man sits with what seems to be a prostitute and listens to the radio and talking about how nobody cares what hes doing but hes doing it. In the poem he even says "you can kiss my ass." Comparing the two poems brings to light the two sides to his writing that Charles Bukoshki had. Most of his writings relate strongly to "A Not so Good Night in the San Pedro of the World. However as we see in "The Laughing Heart", he mentions the idea of "beating death in life" and that "there is a light somewhere." "The Laughing Heart" represents a vary different aspect of his writing but none the less it is a great poem.

4. When looking for the answers to the first and third questions I used Google. When looking for the name and author of the poem, I typed in the first line in the commercial, "Your life is your life." and the first source I saw was called " Just Poetry: The Laughing Heart (Charles Bukowski)" {milan-poetry.blogspot.com/2007/03/laughing-heart-charles-bukowski.html}. After I played the commercial once again and read the poem to see if the correlated and they did. When looking to see if this poem match other pieces he has written I Googled Charles Bukowski and was met with many different sites. The first site I came to was "Charles Bukowski, American Author" {http://bukowski.net/}. However I wasn't content with the sites information offered. I went back to the result page and skipped over the Wikipedia link and found a website called "Charles Bukowski: The Poetry Foundation" {www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-bukowski}. This site provided a great insight into his life and options to view other pieces he wrote. I selected the one titled "A Not so Good Night in the San Pedro of the World." I was surprised in reading when reading this poem because of the different style from the "original" version of poems. I am actually quite interested in his works now due to his individuality.