Opinion | Tortured poets on Taylor Swifts TTPD

Publish date: 2024-08-03

A look at the Tortured Poets group chat of frequently assigned poets as they process Taylor Swift’s newest album.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: I loved “The Albatross”!!!

Edgar Allan Poe: I kept waiting for other birds.

Not enough birds in this album I would say overall

And no bells, tintinnabulating or otherwise.

Lord Byron: it’s a Jack Antonoff production you’re not going to have tintinnabulating bells

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Percy Shelley: I was a little sick of the production. Not seasick

Though… I’ve always had a premonition I would die at sea

John Keats: You know what I would say in response to this album? “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

Percy Shelley: how did you feel about the album though

John Keats: I said what I said

e. e. cummings: when she said that she kept “these longings locked in lowercase inside a vault” i thought

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how sad to keep your lowercase inside a vault. i wear my lowercase with pride

Lord Byron: just looked at twitter — who is Matty Healy?

Siegfried Sassoon: I was sad that none of the songs were about how bad World War I was

Wilfred Owen: Yes! She did a song that alluded to World War I before so it’s not like we are just saying this because we are World War I poets desperate for things to be about World War I

T.S. Eliot: you know she sang a song for “Cats,” the movie

Which I mostly wrote. This was better than that, I felt.

Dylan Thomas: I was actually mentioned in the album. [Everyone gives this message a thumbs down.]

Emily Dickinson: I liked — the Track

About the Chelsea Hotel

It was — a bop — to me

Dylan Thomas: though I did wonder — does she just know me as someone who died in a hotel? I also wrote “A Child’s Christmas In Wales”

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Emily Dickinson: in whales???

A Christmastime — inside — a Whale?

Dylan Thomas: no H

Emily Dickinson: a shame

Patti Smith

Was mentioned too

But she never — checks the chat

Percy Shelley: “So Long, London” had some lines I liked about not abandoning the ship but instead going down with it. This is a best practice I think

Edna St. Vincent Millay: oh my god percy shelley please learn to swim

Percy Shelley: no I don’t want to

learn to burn a candle the correct way

Edna St. Vincent Millay: it was a metaphor

Robert Frost: lyrically, I wish she had taken a road less well-trodden

Edna St. Vincent Millay: wow you could knock me over with a feather that you, Robert Frost, would wish that

William Carlos Williams: i listened to the songs that were on the album

forgive me

Dylan Thomas: shut up plum thief

Lord Byron: this man steals plums

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Percy Shelley: get out of here plum stealer

T.S. Eliot: loved all the religious imagery in “Guilty as Sin”!

John Milton: I loved religious imagery before you were even a twinkle in anyone’s eye

I wish this album was more like “Montero”

Dante: just because it isn’t Lil Nas X

John Milton: Lil Nas X is the only artist alive today whose music interests me! Lil Nas X has vision! Lil Nas X has taste! Did you see the music video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”? The depiction of Satan in that video! This is an artist who gets it!

Dante: Virgil liked it

Virgil: Dante please stop putting words in my mouth. We have talked about this.

Dante: I liked how long “Tortured Poets Department” was! 3 more songs and it would have been tied with the Inferno! Not a comment on the contents just a comment on the length!

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge: it was 31 songs long? I thought I was high

Walt Whitman: I kept waiting for a track to be about Abe Lincoln’s death and none of them were

also who are the men on this album? I enjoy a song of a man and a song of a self as much as anybody, indeed more than most people but a golden retriever with tattoos?

Lord Byron: I’ll hear it out

Homer: at least there were no sexy babies or hill monsters in this one

Elizabeth Bishop: whoa Homer is in the chat!

Homer: I liked “Florida!!!”

Sylvia Plath: when she said that she had been caged and called crazy that resonated

William Blake: yes!

Emily Dickinson: Yes

Sylvia Plath: to a degree

Emily Dickinson: to a — Degree yes

Percy Shelley: I think we should go on a boat and discuss it [Everyone gives this message a thumbs down.]

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