Poetry #1

1. The poem is "The Laughing Heart" by Charles Bukowski.
2.  It is ironic that the commercial chose to use this poem because the poem is about living your life the way you want to, yet the commercial is trying to get you to change that and buy their product.  Commercials are used to convince people to change their life and live the way the seller wants the buyer to live.
3. I think that the poem reflects the author's childhood more than his reputation because many of his writings are about Los Angeles. When he was a child he was abused verbally by his father, friends, and classmates which gave him self confidence issues. This poem expresses how he feels that he needed to believe as a child in order to not be hurt by rude comments.
4. In order to find this information, I googled part of the poem that I heard in the commercial which led me to the author and the name of the poem. After that I looked up Charles Bukowski and found background information about his work and life on Wikipedia and goodreads.