I
FUCKIN’
HATE
POETS!!!!
Taylor Swift’s latest album (slated for release this year) starts off with a bang - four shouted words followed by aggressive, atonal chords, the sound of an angry teenager who just got her first guitar. The reversion is intentional, of course. The pro decided to go amateur. It works. It’s fun. Real fun. After the cacophony dies down, we hear Swift’s voice - a voice we’ve never heard before, completely unmodulated for relatability (and thus, ironically, more relatable), explaining the concept for the album.
“I fucking hate poets,” she says “and I’m gonna torture the shit out of them. 1, 2, 3, 4,” and then a classic punk rhythm sets in, followed by a list of bards she’s preparing to maim. “I’m gonna torture Homer. I’m gonna torture Percy Shelley. I’m gonna torture Rumi. I’m gonna torture Gertrude Stein.” Three minutes later, with a shout of “Tortured poets!!!!” the intro is done and the album proper begins. Each subsequent track adopts the victim’s voice for the pained verses, with Taylor dropping back into her own persona to taunt them in the chorus as she subjects them to classic torments. Fans familiar with Swift’s songwriting chops won’t be surprised by her polyphony, but fans of the poets might give the star a closer look after hearing how well she echoes the voice of each of her subjects. “Dr. Seuss in the Iron Maiden” really sounds like it could fit right next to The Lorax or Green Eggs and Ham, if not for the gruesome subject matter. “John Donne on the Rack” captures not only the metaphysical poet’s meter, but his sense of contradiction and ambiguity, all to an infectious melody co-written with Max Martin. “Maya Angelou within the Brazen Bull” would almost be offensive, if not for the intense feeling that the poet herself is being channeled as Taylor wails through the anguish of being burned alive. You can’t help but feel awful, twisted, evil as America’s favorite pop star resurrects these long-suffering artists to put them through yet more suffering, but you can’t help tapping your toe at the same time. It’s that raw, and that catchy.
All in all, there are 144 poets thus tormented - broken on the wheel, given the thumbscrews, eaten alive by rats. Some tortures are quite clever, if obvious in a way that must be forgiven when one is scourging a dozen dozen of the world’s most celebrated wordsmiths. “Dante Bored” denies “the sick fuck” even the perverse pleasure of being cast into some luscious, imaginative inferno like his own designs - instead, he’s left alone, but constantly distracted when he tries to form a thought, so that he cannot even conceive a prayer like the sufferers in his Purgatorio. “Sylvia Plath Saved From Drowning” conflates the poet with Virginia Woolf, as Swift swims out time and time again to pick the stones from her pocket and pull her from the river, forcing her to live out “The Hours” of her miserable life. If amalgamation is its own torture, she ups the ante in “That Musician They Call a Poet, Fucked Up With Piano Wire” as she flays a figure that appears to be a composite of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Liz Phair, Leonard Cohen, and Stephin Merritt (whose 69 Love Songs was inspiration for her “gross” poetic experiment with 144 poets), among others. It’s incoherent at that point, but that’s the fun. As soon as we get bored by the singer’s mastery, she changes the game to put herself just at the point of failure, maintaining an ever-changing edge. No song is worse or more strangely resonant than the last and 144th track on the dodecaquadruple-EP, “The Poet Inside the Pop Star Taylor Swift.”
Imagine a poet
it begins, and here we can say nothing more, leaving you with the artist’s own words
Imagine a poet inside a little girl
A little girl who dreams
Like all little girls dream
No
Not like all
Not like any little girl dreams because her dreams comes true
She goes to Nashville before she grows up (before she grows up!), she gets a record deal, she tours still in high school and so on and so on she wins and wins again and even wins for losing for every loss is temporary and far eclipsed and is more material to win, more, more
Does not crash, does not ever crash, not like so many stars, does not ever crash, does not ever fuck up (the news says she fucks up but does she ever fuck up? she never fucks up)
Does not know from fucking up and now this is what she comes to cure, the fuck up that she hasn’t fucked up
done as soon as conceived
to manufacture fucking up it’s managed of course
All smooth edges with the hint of sharpness
Like panels in a screensaver screen
You know the kind
Or not who cares
Perfect product, perfect producer
Eats all, consumes and is consumed
Consumed and is consumed
Every dream fulfilled, so that no dreams are left, just fulfillment; complete actualization; we all imagine what would be if we were actualized, but have it all and then you cannot imagine; or she can imagine there are hints, maybe, there are hints of yearning, "If I Were a Man,” but then years ago she has all that comes with it, all that can be described, whatever she wants she can do, she can say
She says it all
And there’s nothing, and there’s nothing
And it’s great, and it’s relatable
Too big to fail
A hint of humanity is enough for all to see it and it to resonate in themselves
So much humanity! Extraordinary! The humanity!
And she’s happy
So imagine there’s a poet inside, let’s imagine just a second the poet had a dream that was crushed like all dreams, like the essential nature of dreams, not like the dreams the girl had outside the poet (she can’t write, the one inside, she never learned to write like the other, forgive her) had that were fulfilled (that cannot be like your dreams or like anyone’s dreams, they cannot live the full life of dreams)
say hoop dreams
She’s 5’11 so say hoop dreams
The girl outside of the poet inside (the poet can’t write, I told you, forgive me)
The girl outside of the poet inside has no hoop dreams
5’11” with no hoop dreams
To dream of hoops is not even imaginable. It is invisible, basketball, physicality, viscerality, the WNBA, invisible
Alyssa Thomas, Dewanna Bonner, Kahleah Copper - unimaginable
Invisible
Sports for - sports for her is you know what it is, dating the quarterback but it’s gotta be the tight end these days, you know why, look who the quarterback is who the quarterback can be those days
A spurious accusation withdrawn (a wound! something against which to strike back!)
Invisible, Courtney Williams invisible, Bec Allen invisible (Australian, too far down under, other side of globe)
But imagine hoop dreams from inside because here’s what happens they get crushed. 5’11” and let’s say she has hoop dreams. cheer captain bleacher and no hoop dreams. no but she has hoop dreams. if you’re 5’11” and a bit smart you can hoop, keep your hands up and get in position mess up space
there’s a blank space baby
to earn space
That’s all she wants at first and this is important, first you don’t dream of success, you don’t dream of perfection, exception, you just want to not fuck up, like Bernadett Hatar, to not fuck up, the experience of being a fuck up, up close and not in narrative, to just be, no reflection, you don’t want that (AND YOU CAN AVOID IT)
and it happens, you get crossed up, embarrassed, the ball gets stripped, you brick some shots
and all you can help is the team. it can’t be you you don’t want it to be you, it’s the team.
not the team around you but you around the team
it changes of course
it will be your team
for a shining moment. that will be part of the dream that dies
you get there you’re 5’11” and you understand space, you understand angles. to pick apart defenses, to position oneself in advance, to exploit each aggression for victory
always you understood it, exceptionally
to repeat a motion flawlessly, to record, the free throw, delle donne, like delle donne
you can go far at 5’11” but here’s the key
not far enough
hahahahaha life not far enough never
not far enough when someone’s faster or a better shot or stronger or they see angles you don’t
believe it or not they see angles you don’t
slow to come off a screen (can’t fight through the screen) and she hits the shot you don’t
threaten the space even get in the space
more moments, still useful but it don’t taste the same
doesn’t
don’t - more relatable - correction
it don’t taste the same
yes
the mastery short-lived and the role reverts
at a higher level
from queen to bug like everyone else
worse off the court
it’s crush, crush, crush
escape?
off to school
you learn in school many things about how the world works but not how to piece it together
BUT YOU WANT TO
you can’t hahahahaha
you never believe you HAVE understood, not after a certain point
your poetry tops out and you can’t express it
meanwhile to work (always to work)
nothing to do with anything you want
instrumentalized
by who? no fucking idea
a blessing trapped in there
cannot see self in work
illusion dispelled
your job is separable from your life
your life is separable from your job
your words, your art, you never even try, almost never, but when you do it’s neither and it’s its own thing
this is my realm
the poet inside
where I could live inside what your life could have been a poet (A VERY BAD ONE)
maybe in a life like that
no desire for it
you don’t want it
a great and celebrated life
nothing unsatisfying, satisfied, fulfilled, no lack, nobody needs to be a poet
the tortured poet not tortured anyway; a charmed life
a charmed life where the dreams crushed are superfluous
nothing to escape everything already escaped
to care about where you go? work? self? art? unimaginable
you get your legs blown off you die of bad water you never make it out of the dark
if you want to be a real human
you don’t and none of us do and you can’t feel a thing
i hate Robin Williams
I’ve been holding onto this shit for too long
Every one of his shitty movies I’m gonna make an album about and my lawyers will kill his estate lawyers
Fucking slay them
60 Minute Film Development
Madam Dubiousflame
Rise and Shine Saigon
Great Billy Foraging
Phlubber
Every goddamn one an album
This is just the beginning
Bobby Billies
And so I enter into evidence
My tarnished coat of arms
My muses, acquired like bruises
My talismans and charms
The tick,
tick,
tick
My veins of pitch black ink
(All’s fair in love and poetry…
Sincerely,
The Chairman
of the Tortured Poets Department
YEAH! THE TORTURED POETS DEPARtment
BECAUE POETS
FUCKING
STINK!
[end]