Invisible Strings

An anthology of brand-new poems inspired by Taylor Swift songs, from a powerhouse group of contemporary poets, including Kate Baer, Maggie Smith, and Joy Harjo.

<Let the decoding begin!<

< <With a record-breaking four Grammy awards for Album of the Year, Taylor Swift stands alone in the world of pop music. One of the most talented lyricists of all time, her music captivates millions of fans throughout the globe with the narrative depth and emotional resonance of her songwriting.

In <Invisible Strings<, poet, professor, and dedicated Swiftie Kristie Frederick-Daugherty has brought together 113 contemporary poets, each contributing an original poem that responds to a specific Taylor Swift song.

In a spirit of celebration and collaboration, poets have taken a cue from Swift&rsquo;s love of dropping clues and puzzles for her fandom to decode, as each poem alludes to a song without using direct lyrics.

The collection showcases a diverse and accomplished array of writers including the 23rd US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, Pulitzer Prize winners Diane Seuss, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips, Rae Armantrout, and Gregory Pardlo, National Book Critics Circle Award winners Mary Jo Bang and Laura Kasischke, and bestselling poets Maggie Smith, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kate Baer, Amanda Lovelace, Tyler Knott Gregson, and Jane Hirshfield.

Swifties will experience the profundity and nuance of Swift&rsquo;s lyrics through these poems, while having fun matching the poems to songs from all of her eras&mdash;vault tracks included! For poetry lovers, this one-of-a-kind anthology is an unparalleled collection of new work from today&rsquo;s most lauded and revered poets....

Auteur
Kristie Frederick Daugherty is a poet and a professor at the University of Evansville. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also a PhD candidate in Literature/Criticism at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she is writing a dissertation which examines how Taylor Swift's lyrics intersect with contemporary poetry.

Échantillon de lecture
Introduction

Kristie Frederick Daugherty

I am a debut-era Swiftie—I remember the first time I heard Taylor Swift’s young voice singing “Teardrops on My Guitar” from my daughter’s CD player. I have attended many of Swift’s concerts, from her first headlining tour, Fearless, all the way through to her Nashville and Cincinnati stops of the Eras tour.

At the kickoff stop of the Fearless tour in Evansville, Indiana, I was sitting with my daughter at the end of an aisle, and at one point Swift brushed my arm as she made her way back to the stage after starting a song at the top of the stadium. While I knew then that Swift’s lyrics had staying power, I had no idea that Swift would become a singer whose words would move hundreds of millions of fans across the globe. And I certainly had no idea that her lyrics and the art form in which I write—poetry—would one day intersect to take the shape of this anthology. I like to think of the slight brush of Swift as she walked past me in Roberts Stadium on April 23, 2009, as foreshadowing of this anthology. It is pretty to think so.

In addition to being a Swiftie, I am also an ardent reader and writer of contemporary poetry. And I know—as Sir Jonathan Bate discusses in the foreword—how well Swift has trained her fans in the art of close reading. I’ll never forget the magic of sitting up high with my friend Leslie Wilhelmus on the second night of the Cincinnati Eras tour at Paycor Stadium, as sixty-five thousand Swifties sang along to every single word of a forty-four-song set. Swifties also recognize the literary devices of poetry weaving through Swift’s rich discography. Swift has taught her fans to read her lyrics carefully, attending to syntax, symbol, and sound, just as poets learn to read literature. Swifties spend countless hours discussing Swift’s songs with one another, on social media, and even in the increasingly common Taylor Swift classes—Stephanie Burt’s Harvard course “Taylor Swift and Her World” is just one example.

Swifties have a love language, and I am fluent.

So, as I watched as Taylor Swift announced her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, during the Grammys, a question popped into my mind: How might contemporary poetry grab this moment? Could poetry and poets join in conversation with Swift? As quickly as the question formed, so did an answer: an anthology in which poets would respond to Taylor Swift’s songs without quoting her lyrics. That way fans could, to quote Shakespeare, “by indirections find directions out” by close reading the poems to discover the songs behind them.

I immediately messaged the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Diane Seuss. Like Swift, Seuss is a woman who must be protected at all costs, a woman who says the words for us. I asked Seuss if she would contribute a poem to this anthology, then watched as those three dots on Messenger appeared and disappeared. A “yes” from Seuss would decide if the anthology could take off. Her message appeared: “Yes. And here is a list of people to invite. You may tell them I am contributing.”

Often in my life, Diane Seuss has been there for me, her latest volume of poetry tucked into my purse just to keep her words near. And in 2022, when I messaged Seuss directly for the first time to express my love for her poetry, she messaged right back. We spoke for more than an hour—and she generously shared her poetic wisdom.

Swift has been there for me too, all along, in her own way—with every new album illustrating growth as a lyricist. After folklore and evermore, I did not know how Swift could possibly write another album at a higher level. But that manner of thinking does not work with Swift because her albums simply aren’t comparable. Swift doesn’t just make another album; she reinvents; she deconstructs to construct. The Tortured Poets Department shows us a songwriter in full control of her powers, one who mixes metaphors and doesn’t care. Swift embodies the famous lines by Hélène Cixous from “The Laugh of the Medusa”:

Because she arrives, vibrant, over and over again; we are at the beginning of a new history, or rather a process of becoming in which several histories intersect with one another. As a subject for history, woman always occurs simultaneously in several places.

Swift does arrive, vibrant, over and over again, dropping lines like, “Did you hear my covert narcissism / I disguise like altruism / like some kind of congressman” in a pop song, and everyone sings along while googling for definitions—it’s a real thing, how Swift increases the lexicon of her fans. She also moves brilliantly within and between the songs on her albums. Her songs talk to one another, reshape themselves, and get recontextualized as Swift reinvents herself. “Hits Different,” the last track on Midnights (The Til Dawn Edition), ends with, “Have they come to take me away?” Meanwhile, The Tortured Poets Department begins with the song “Fortnight” and the line “I was supposed to be sent away / But they forgot to come and get me.” And just like that, Swift transforms the space between Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department from silence to an audible pause, as if continuing a life libretto.

There is always a link.

This is the magic of Taylor Swift—a magic she cultivates in her fan base. Everything connects. The center does not fall apart—it orbits itself to create a new thing. Younger listeners find themselves in her earlier albums&mdash…