What if, instead of splodey-type bombs, we bombarded our enemies with the skills of poetry bombers? I'd be down. Metaphors and analogies clogging up the water supply with introspection and feeling? Heck yes. Bring it on.

One "poetry bomber", as it were, has been hard at work in Miami attempting to brighten the days of strangers with words. Argentinean artist Agustina Woodgate has been surreptitiously sewing tags into clothes for sale at the city's thrift stores. The tags contain lines from poems by the likes of Sylvia Plath and Li Po. Woodgate has been kicked out of two stores on account of her poetry integration, but continues to sneak words into garments around the city. There are enough used clothing stores that she can slip around mostly unnoticed with her needle and thread. 

I love a good culture hack, and this is a great one. We expect poetry to exist in very particular places: in books, at readings, maybe tattooed on the ribs of an aspiring writer, but not in the waistbands of skirts. By putting lines of poems in places where they aren't expected, they suddenly demand more attention of the unintentional reader. There's a mystery behind each tag, a guessing game as to who left it there and why. The thing about art--the fresh, surprising kind--is that there is no why. Woodgate has no functional reason to be doing what she's doing except, maybe, to make people smile or even think. And that's what art ought to do--exist outside of functionality, outside of all the things we do to survive, all the mechanical actions undertaken daily to support our existence. Art and poetry exist for pleasure or understanding beyond the mundane. They're non-capitalistic undertakings. So when you buy a piece of clothing tagged by Woodgate, you'll be receiving a small, surprise relief from the usual give-and-take of the modern era.