Invisible Strings
Click on the image of Invisible Strings to purchase!
Each poem in Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift responds to a specific Taylor song without using direct lyrics or titles.
Spoiler alert!
Click here for the song/poem pairing list!
Kristie Frederick Daugherty is pictured telling Andrea Swift about Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift on the last night of The Eras Tour in Vancouver on Dec. 8. Andrea listened as Kristie told Andrea how 113 of the best of contemporary poets - including six Pulitzer Prize winners - came together to write poems in response to Taylor's songs, and how the world's leading Shakespeare scholar Sir Jonathan Bate wrote the foreword in which he calls Taylor "a true poet." Kristie was able to give Andrea a copy of Invisible Strings. It was beyond a magical moment.
Click on the above image to play The Taylor Swift Poetry Quiz from The New York Times!
An excerpt from the introduction of Invisible Strings by 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.
Poems from Invisible Strings
Pull
Maggie Smith
You know but pretend not to know:
I’ve lived out here too long,
in the woods & the rain,
all the trees smelling of wet leather.
I could say the moon makes lace
in the leaves, but my wilderness
isn’t pretty. That’s its pull.
Even if I stay with you, even if
you light a fire & coax me inside,
you know I’ll wander each night
to the dark windows, seeing only
myself reflected but staring & staring,
sometimes pressing a palm to the glass,
knowing too well the other side.
Responds to the song "peace"
A Shared Nocturne
Tyler Knott Gregson
Send them backwards,
graceless echoes peeling from
unbuilt walls, six carats
back to carbon before the flame.
Unsaid words from unpursed lips,
salt stains bounced from
shirt sleeves, birdsong in reverse
like secret track on unpressed vinyl,
returned to the branches of an ungrown
tree, to seed, to soil, to all unrooted
beneath the burying place.
Send them back,
howls from boneless shapes
put back the marrow, the white
inside the white
come tendon come flesh
come synapse and strength
come cartilage come stirrup
hammer and anvil come through
unbroken oval window
come and whisper
Stay.
Responds to the song "my tears ricochet"
Tempered
Teri Ellen Cross Davis
Your friends said you wanted to meet Miss Bronze.
I fit the mold, living next door and all.
The invite to come by rang in earnest when
your boy said it. I just knew I loved your name.
Saturated from sunlight, we spent a sparkling summer
rusting, we put on a good performance.
From bar to bed, you showed me off—a pretty armpiece
dipped in metal. By fall, I’d be alone with dents in my crown.
Like a petulant rock star, as the last song ends
flipping off the audience, what is it about small men
when they meet a woman worth knowing?
The pinup becomes a push pin, love, a forgotten quotidian.
Drifting under starlight, we spent a sparkling summer.
I swam to you, mistaking a rip tide for an invitation.
You took everything out of me and I, I just loved your name.
Responds to the song "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived"
Hark, the Raucous Heiress Speaks
Shikha Malaviya
Listen, I poured champagne in the pool to mask the chlorine. And I talked
over others because I wanted to be heard & seen. Don’t let anyone tell you that you laugh too loud. And you can marry for love as many times as you please.
Also, all that ‘master of one’ stuff is bullshit! You can be more than one thing.
Women always are. I was a sculptor, composer, philanthropist, artist, and a
patron of the world’s most elegant form of dance—ballet. In my backyard, I
even built a stage for pirouettes and pliés. The neighbors weren’t pleased.
Mistress of my own mind if you know what I mean.
Listen, like people, houses have their own karma. You are here because this
house wants you to be, between azure skies and cerulean sea. Both you and
I, strong as the tides. Call it kismet. Call it folklore. Call it holiday. Call it
highwatch. Once a lookout for British ships. Now a mansion for the successful
&#%$*! Between eight bedrooms and eleven thousand square feet, we were
destined to meet. ‘I was here’ is stamped in the air and now I bequeath that to
you. Don’t let anyone piss in your pool. In all your songs, stay true!
Responds to the song "The Last Great American Dynasty"
Paperweight
Lang Leav
A verse on a gilded page, heavy as a heart. An old friend comes to the
phone. I ask, draw us a card. I plead, anything but the lovers—how can we
ever be more if the romance refuses to die? If I’m never allowed to fall out of
your good graces, if I never get to see you one post-apocalyptic morning
with smoke in your eyes, between the deluge of the day to day. Just a year
ago, I was walking on your rooftop, howling at your window, beating down
your door. You said, stop trying to align the stars and wait—just wait for them
to fall.
Responds to the song "The Prophecy"