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November 21, 2015

The Past and Future of Magnetic Poetry, the Populist Product that Began With a Sneeze

poetry1.jpg

In 1993, Kapell was living in an 8-person co-op in Minneapolis,

pursuing songwriting, his true passion, in between shifts at his data entry job. One night, he was trying to bust writer's block using the cut-up method, in which you chop magazines or other texts into bite-sized pieces and mix them up for inspiration. He had a pile of clippings all arranged when his allergies kicked in. "One of my roommates was working at a pizza place, and they had misprinted their advertising fridge magnets with the wrong phone number on them," Kapell says in a phone interview. "She brought them home thinking that maybe somebody might have a use for them. When I sneezed and all my little slips of paper blew all over the place, I thought, oh, I'll stick little pieces of magnets on the back of each one and then stick 'em onto a cookie sheet. And that was the first magnetic poetry kit." | Mental Floss

Posted by gerardvanderleun at November 21, 2015 9:42 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

His company is now bigger than Boeing, right. Must be on the NASDAQ.

Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 21, 2015 10:41 AM

Never heard of it til now, and glad of it.
Shit stuck all over the fridge door is just sooo classy.

Posted by: ghostsniper [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 21, 2015 12:09 PM

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