Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift Edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty

Book Review

The long histories of poetry and music are stitched together by the strings of the lyre. In Ancient Greece, poetry was sung live with musical accompaniment from the lyre, the musical instrument of the God of poetry, Apollo, and from which the word “lyric” originates. Poetry retains the sonic qualities of music—rhyme, tempo, and meter—that define poetry as distinct from prose, as performer and writer Carol Kimball explores in her book, Art Song. “In a sense,” Kimball writes, “the singer becomes the poet, re-creating his poem in the texture of musical sound. We are not just singing words, we are singing poems.”

If this is so, then I put forth an irrefutable fact: Taylor Swift is the most prominent poet of our age. Her lyrics have not only profoundly influenced the music industry but also the modern literary landscape. With the publication of Invisible Strings edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty, Swift’s poetic legacy is cemented: a legacy defined by the emotionally charged, first-person perspective of the lyric.