Among the many glowing reviews that Taylor Swift’s eleventh album, The Tortured Poets Department, has received, a line from one in particular sought to further position the work as genuine poetry—high-brow prose. To be more specific, The Times’ review deemed the songs on the album to be “as rich and concise as a short story collection.” Even if no truly rich and concise short story collection would ever spit out the seemingly AI-generated lyrics, “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate/We both declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.” But the praise across the board for how “artful” and “confessional” the “poetry”/“short stories” are speaks only to the two-pronged issue of the day: no one reads dense literature anymore and Swift, apparently, fills the storytelling void where bona fide literature once did. 

This isn’t to say Swift doesn’t know how to turn out bops and ballads that will stay in your head forever. She’s good at what she does: releasing hit songs. Alas, if one thought the often overblown reverence for Swift was unparalleled before, the release of this record has made many a skeptic fully understand that there’s nothing she can’t spin into gold. Even if many of her songs are either 1) pretty standard when it comes to lovelorn lyrics and 2) often very similar from a sonic standpoint (one supposes Jack Antonoff is to blame). Swift, fully aware of her power, has reached a point where she now refuses to self-edit. Hence, the extended amount of bloviating that has resulted in a double album of thirty-one songs (Swift even managed to top Beyoncé in that area, with Cowboy Carter, which is presented as a non-double album, coming in at twenty-seven songs). 

Thanks to that lack of self-editing, by the end of The Anthology edition (starting from “The Albatross” and all the way to “The Manuscript”), her tone has become so static that one song tends to become indistinguishable from another (though Swifties would vehemently deny such an assessment). The only mark of distinction, in fact, is which set of lyrics can one-up each other on cringe factor (case in point, should “You know how to ball, I know Aristotle/Brand new, full throttle/Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” from “So High School” be placed ahead of “We would pick a decade/We wished we could live in instead of this/I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists” from “I Hate It Here”?). 

Nonetheless, for a few album cycles now (including additional cachet from the re-recordings), Swift has been billed as the twenty-first century answer to a “modern poet.” In the twentieth century, Bob Dylan had an unequivocal hold on that title (and yes, he, too, could write bangers about relationships [hear: “Like A Rolling Stone”]). And even for some of the twenty-first, when the Swedish Academy decided Dylan was worthy of the Nobel Prize in Literature. According to them, Dylan deserved it more than the fellow nominees that year (2016) “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” 

Based on that description, and the ever-blooming love people have for Swift (as well as The Tortured Poets Department), it would come as no surprise if she, too, eventually won this award after Dylan paved the way. Even though, to be fair, Lana Del Rey is the worthier candidate considering she actually has written a book of poetry (Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass) and her songs are chock full of literary references in the same fashion that allowed Dylan to garner attention for a nomination. Not just “references” alone, but actual name-checking of poets and writers (e.g, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound [both in “Desolation Row”], Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud [both in “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”], Allen Ginsberg [in “See You Later Allen Ginsberg”] and Jack Kerouac [in “Key West,” during which Ginsberg and Gregory Corso are also mentioned]—Kerouac’s The Subterraneans was also the inspiration for the song title “Subterranean Homesick Blues”). 

To boot, Del Rey shares a similar affinity for the Beat Generation, even though Dylan actually counted those men as his friends and contemporaries. Regardless of “living through it” or not, Del Rey is known for romanticizing the past in general, making literary allusions like, “I get down to Beat poetry” (“Brooklyn Baby”), “24/7 Sylvia Plath” (“hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but i have it”), “I sing the body electric” (“Body Electric”), “Life imitates art” (“Gods and Monsters”), “Light of my life, fire of my loins” (“Off to the Races”) and just outright reciting T. S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton” as an interlude on Honeymoon. 

With Swift, name-checking and referencing is, let’s say, slightly less refined (one needn’t bring up Charlie Puth again). Though it’s clear she’s trying to up her game on that front with the TTPD mentions of Dylan Thomas, Patti Smith, Clara Bow, Cassandra (as in the prophetess) and Stevie Nicks (Del Rey didn’t ever need to name-check her because they actually collaborated on 2017’s “Beautiful People Beautiful Problems”). This all being part of her conscientious effort to “elevate” her work to the level of being classified as “true, elegant” poetry. Hence, her extremely flowery, writer-culture-as-costume characterization of the album as follows:

The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time—one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.”

Here it feels a bit like “tortured” is a euphemism for “bad.” Because there is definitely some post-breakup poetry that never needs to be seen or heard by the rest of the world (including the likes of: “Your wife waters flowers/I wanna kill her/And for a fortnight there, we were together/Run into you sometimes, comment on my sweater”). And yet, no one among the huddled masses seems the least bit bothered by the fact that Swift is, frankly, a pseudointellectual poser now traipsing into the land of the literary to firmly stake her claim there, too. Granted, she was already on one about being a proper poetess with her “quill pen/fountain pen/glitter gel pen” quote when she gave her acceptance speech for Artist-Songwriter of the Decade at the Nashville Songwriter Awards in 2022. 

At that awards show, it was confirmed: this is a woman who refers to writing as “the craft” (which is absolutely disgusting and one should run in the other direction when they hear a “writer” talk this way, because only people who [try to] teach writing would dare to even attempt uttering that phrase with a serious expression). This is a woman who looks at writing (and relationships) as something purely commodifiable. Hence, her machine-esque declaration, “I have established genre categories for lyrics I write. Three of them, to be exact. They are affectionately titled ‘quill lyrics,’ ‘fountain pen lyrics’ and ‘glitter gel pen lyrics.’ I came up with these categories based on what writing tool I imagine having in my hand when I scribbled it down, figuratively.” Because, obviously, she’s much fonder of just using the Notes app. Which brings to mind the meme poking fun at girls who “jot down thoughts and feelings” in said entity. The one that has an image of Joan Didion smoking her cigarette and the sardonic caption, “Expressed a thought in the Notes app.”  

Swift went on in that same speech, “I categorize certain lyrics of mine in the quill style if the words if the words and phrasings are antiquated. If I was inspired to write it after reading Charlotte Brontë or after watching a movie where everyone is wearing poet shirts and corsets. If my lyrics sound like Emily Dickinson’s grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that’s me writing in the quill genre.” Of the fountain pen style, Swift stated, “Most of my lyrics fall into this category… [it] means a modern storyline or references with a poetic twist. Taking a common phrase and flipping its meaning. Basically trying to paint a vivid picture of a situation down to the chipped paint on the doorframe and the incense dust on the vinyl shelf.” Or the “seven chocolate bars” consumed. To her, they’re “confessions scribbled and sealed in an envelope but too brutally honest to ever send.” Instead preferring to beam them off to the entire world for dissection. 

As for the glitter gel pen style, Swift describes it as “frivolous, carefree, bouncy, syncopated perfectly to the feet. Glitter gel pen lyrics don’t care if you don’t take them seriously because they don’t take themselves seriously.” Nor does Swift (she claims). But anyone who makes that much money has to, in most ways, be “serious.” Even behind all the “relatable,” “chaotic dweeb” posturing. 

By the conclusion of the speech that reduces writing to a capitalistic (complete with creating a boon for the pen industry), categorizing conveyor belt operation, she lets a Freudian slip come out by calling songwriting her “ever-ending” (soon correcting herself to “never-ending”) thrill. And it does seem to be ever-ending as a thrill based on The Tortured Poets Department. Song after song showcasing the most overwrought, trite, already well-trodden-in-her-canon lyrics. 

Perhaps this is why TTPD is arguably her most gimmicky offering in terms of being a “concept album” that centers on Being A Writer (because now it’s part of the cosplay universe as well). A “tortured poet,” if you will. One wants to believe, of course, that, with this shtick, she’s really just trolling the pretentious ex (Matty Healy) most of the album is based on, including her “sick burn,” “You left your typewriter at my apartment/Straight from The Tortured Poets Department/I think some things I never say/Like, ‘Who uses typewriters anyway?’” The answer, evidently, is Swift…if we’re to go by her video for “Fortnight.” But no, it was purely shade aimed at Healy. Who is no poet by any stretch of the imagination either. So at least Swift has the good sense to admit, “We’re modern idiots” instead of modern poets. But one knows she doesn’t really feel that way about herself, nor do any of her fans or the various “committees” doling out awards that praise her songwriting on a regular basis. Songwriting that bills itself as “smart” and “witty.” And now, “literary.” Perhaps all by American standards alone. 

With TTPD, an undeniable surge in “literary interest” has arrived (even libraries and bookstores have been trying to cash in on it with their tie-ins to Swift lyrics on social media). But it’s of the sort that centers on it in a solely superficial way (for instance, the “aesthetic cachet” of owning a quill pen, a fountain pen, a glitter gel pen, a typewriter and a shelf filled with books that will go unread). We’re talking Rupi Kaur, R. M. Drake “Instagram poet” superficial. And while many would argue that there’s no form of “taking an interest in literature” that can be bad, they seem to be discounting the fact that the more skin deep the interest (and execution) is, the greater the likelihood that shitty, subpar work will be published in response to the increasingly Swiftian tastes of the public. And, unfortunately, no one immediately thinks of Jonathan Swift when the word “Swiftian” is used anymore. 

As for the marquee she’s put over herself for the sake of the album’s “persona,” Swift knows nothing of the conventional artist’s torture: she was born to affluent parents and her dreams were indefatigably bolstered both emotionally and financially. The “tortured poet” title is as honorary as her degree (a doctorate of fine arts) from NYU. What’s more, her inability to authentically come from that place of a particular kind of torturedness is overt in the “I Hate It Here” lyrics that pander to the tragedy of not ever getting to be the artist you thought you would. Of having to actually give up your dream because your parents were never going to buttress it and you had to realize that a practical career was the only realistic path. So it is that Swift tries her best to mimic that pain with the lines, “Quick, quick/Tell me something awful/Like you are a poet trapped inside the body of a finance guy.” Swift, in truth, is a finance guy trapped inside the body of a “poet.”

To that point, in a review that had to be posted anonymously for Paste magazine (lest the Swifties harass a bitch), the writer phrased it best when they said, “There is nothing poetic about a billionaire—who, mind you, threatens legal action against a Twitter account for tracking her destructive private jet paths…” and “This is your songwriter of the century? Open the schools.” As we’ve seen recently though, the schools are very much in a closing mood.