In this essay by high school student Anthony Daans (who kindly allowed me to give some feedback on his project), he argues for Taylor Swift as a modern Romantic poet, while also exploring some of the ways in which this persona might stand at odds with other aspects of Swift's career. Thank you so much,… Continue reading Taylor Swift: The New Romantic Poet
Tag: Essay
What about Wendy? Adaptation, interrogation, and turning on the light
When Swift’s speaker sings in ‘cardigan’ that the object of the song ‘tried to change the ending, Peter losing Wendy’, she encourages us to go back and take a closer look at a story that may have been a staple of our childhoods. The line is deeply ambiguous, and has always puzzled me. It’s unclear whether he tried to change the (happy) ending, making it so that Peter instead lost Wendy; whether he tried and failed to change the (unhappy) ending of Peter losing Wendy; whether he tried to change the (unhappy) ending, but Peter lost Wendy anyway. Is Peter losing Wendy the result of his actions, or the fate he tried to change? [Click above image to read on.]
Is Taylor Swift a poet? Yes. Is that the wrong question to ask? Also yes
With less than 24 hours to go before perhaps the biggest release in music history - Taylor Swift's hotly-anticipated eleventh album, The Tortured Poets Department, already downloaded over 200 million times after being leaked the day before the official launch - the requests have started to roll into my inbox from journalists, all asking a variation on the same question: does this mean that Taylor Swift is, like...a poet? An actual...poet? [Click above image to read more]
Swifterature 