 |
Dave Kapell, inventor of
Magnetic Poetry
— Photo: Jim Clifford |
Dave Kapell, (’91), says he has told the story of The Sneeze That Created Magnetic Poetry so many times that it is beginning to sound like an urban legend. A few years after getting his degree in English, Kapell was an aspiring musician and poet who liked nothing better than to play around with words. One technique he used to spark his imagination was to cut up random sets of words and rearrange them into new phrases. With his allergies, however, sessions tended to last only a few moments before a sneeze would send the scraps flying.
Then came inspiration out of frustration: cutting up a set of refrigerator magnets a friend had given him, he glued the words to them and stuck them on a cookie sheet. Friends who came over discovered what millions have since found —they were unable to resist moving the words around, creating funny and unexpected combinations. Kapell began selling kits he put together in his apartment at local art fairs. They were well received there, too, and he was using the money to pay off college loans in anticipation of going back to school to become a teacher. But then the Museum Company placed an order for 10,000 kits, and he was in business full time.
Even established poets love Magnetic Poetry. No less than Robert Pinsky, former U.S. poet laureate, wrote an enthusiastic introduction to The Magnetic Poetry Book of Poetry. (The company also maintains an online anthology.) “[The praise] is sort of embarrassing in a way,” says Kapell. “After all, the product came about because I was not a good writer. It was a crutch for me to help my own writing.”
Spelling out your soul’s desire
As Magnetic Poetry has grown into a multimillion-dollar firm, Kapell keeps a higher vision than making a buck. “My personal mission in this whole thing is to give entry points into difficult artistic disciplines,” he says. “Magnetic Poetry is an easy way of starting to think like a poet by just messing around and letting people have some measure of success on their first try.”
While Magnetic Poetry might seem like a one-shot gimmick, a sort of Pet Rock for the ’90s, Kapell and company have continued to branch out into new areas: poetry garden stones, poetry beads for necklaces, a magnetic poetry game, online poetry kits, and a growing set of kits in different languages, for specific cities, and for selected interests. Some of the latest products apply Magnetic Poetry’s idea of random combinations to other art forms. Camcorder Helper encourages home video shooters to loosen up and take chances; a ukulele song kit in the works will help novices create chord progressions and song lyrics. “Almost all the songs that come out of it are pretty weird,” Kapell laughs.
While Kapell never became an English teacher, he takes comfort in the thought that Magnetic Poetry is “a lot more effective teacher of creative spirit to a lot more people than I ever could have reached.”
From inspiration to outer space, the U is changing the world one graduate at a time
Kapell is included in the new University of Minnesota Alumni Association (UMAA) ad campaign “Changing the World One Graduate at a Time.”
A mid-1980s advertising effort celebrated some of the big names in University alumni history—like Hubert H. Humphrey and Roy Wilkins—while this new campaign features the behind-the-scenes players who are changing our life for the better.
A television public service announcement (PSA) is running on KSTP Channel 5 through December and has been provided to other Hubbard Broad-casting outlets for their PSA rotation. Along with Kapell, it features Earl Bakken (’48), who invented the battery-powered heart pacemaker in 1957 while working with pioneering heart surgeon Dr. C. Walton Lilliehei at the University of Minnesota Hospital. The ad, with messages spelled out in Magnetic Poetry, also mentions Michele Brekke (’75, ’77), NASA’s first female flight director, and Robert W. Gore (‘61, ‘63), the inventor of Gore-Tex. The punchline of the spot is, “Did we mention the inventor of Magnetic Poetry?”
A series of print ads that appeared in local newspapers feature Endesha Ida Mae Holland (’79, ’84, ’86) an award-winning playwright and University of Southern California professor, as well as Brekke and Gore. The Minneapolis advertising agency Gabriel Diericks Razidlo (now Gabriel deGrood Bendt) created the ads. Other names collected by the alumni association are being organized into a list of notable alumni that will be available on the alumni association’s new Web site. The UMAA hopes to keep the campaign alive by working with collegiate units to publicize more graduates who are helping change the world.
by Chris Coughlan-Smith
get more info To see the television spots and print ads, go to www.umaa.umn.edu.
For more about Magnetic Poetry, visit www.magpo.com.
|
