On poetry and Taylor Swift

A double proposal hit means Chaedrol Acquisition News won’t return until after Memorial Day. I’m using today’s post for something completely different.

I’m embarrassed to say this, because poetry is often so self-important, but we need it, good poetry, now especially. Does good poetry exist, isn’t that subjective? It is, and “good” exists. Poetry distills our reflection and then ornaments the concentrate in unexpected ways. Convention rarely allows such clear sight. Poetry is the bad experiment that worked one time and might again.

I’m not being a hater because I’m even a slight fan, but Taylor Swift’s lyrics are not good poetry, but they could lead people to it. Here’s a fast take on three songs.

You’re Losing Me

This opens with what passes as clever word play for Swift (you say, “I don’t understand,” and I say, “I know you don’t”). Then the first of a long line of tried and true and very tired metaphors: the medical/psychological, the architectural, depression (because that’s what “sitting in the dark” says in two more syllables).

Swift writes memorable choruses, but even better are her prechoruses, and even better still are her bridges. I’m speaking mostly musically but also lyrically.

Here, the bridge makes the song, but only after she trots out the brokedown soldier again who is her and does bleed and is brave and bruised, but in “You’re Losing Me,” a volta brings honest framing for the first time, so different in tone we realize how unreliable the narrator is. (And I wouldn't marry me either / a pathological people pleaser / who only wanted you to see her.)

I’m on record as a sucker for modulations and the imperative as sentence structure, and the simple pairings in the remainder of the bridge serve their purpose, with nice pattern variation in the final couplet (do something, say something / lose something, risk something / choose something, i got nothing / to believe unless you’re choosing me).

All Too Well (10 Minute Version)

Verse 3 is a Tori Amos ripoff with the hokey nonsequiturs. What’s worth a mention is here Swift anchors the soldier imagery (verse 6) with alliteration and a mention of loaded mention of weight (from when your Brooklyn broke my skin and bones / I'm a soldier who's returning half her weight).

Playing with serious metaphors doesn’t necessarily lend credibility to the work at hand; meaning travels both ways. War is war, and young love is narcissistic, but we should rapidly outgrow “metaphorical maiming”; Swift likes it so much she repeats it in the outro. Just say no.

Fortnight

I am a sucker for these rhythmic tracks (Chainsmokers’ “Think of Us” and that Mary J song also); the beat drives the lyrics forward, ready or not. The worthwhile lyric here is the surprise at the end of the chorus: “your wife waters flowers; I want to kill her.” If Swift is singing it, we all must think it. I like also Post Malone’s contrasting of Florida with America, but I doubt everyone will.

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Maybe someone advised Swift these songs lyrically are unfinished or at best wildly uneven, and she rightly ignored that loser and instead wrote more of the same. Maybe Swift likes a clunker, sung along to on the radio they’re less offensive, but that doesn’t make them defensible.

I opened the May 2024 issue of Poetry at random (thank you, sis) to this: