If Taylor Swift is a Tortured Poet, Isn’t Everyone?

Three of the most well-paid “poets” in the game right now. (Wayback Machine, Flickr, aftermusiic)

While winning yet another Grammy, Taylor Swift took the chance to plug her upcoming and eleventh album: The Tortured Poets Department. Shortly after the announcement, Google recorded a 588 percent increase of users searching “Dead Poets Society.” This strange moment arrives within a year of Drake’s Titles Ruin Everything dropping, a half-hearted attempt at writing poems. Both of these super rich pop stars’ projects come on the heels of Lana Del Rey’s Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass which debuted in summer 2020 with unforgettable lines such as “left my city for San Francisco / took a free ride off a billionaire’s jet.” Poetry is, apparently, cool cosplay for the rich and famous in the early 2020s — while not supporting loved ones in or winning bets related to the Super Bowl, that is.

One might encounter this trend and think “Wow, salty. Who cares if people call themselves poets?” Frankly, few. But there’s a history to poetry, especially the medium’s relationship to protest and disruption, that is valuable. No amount of bizarre, highly-stylized books from Drake or Lana Del Rey changes the fact that they, alongside Swift, are gatekeepers of normative culture, making sure that with each million they stack they uphold power structures ensuring that, rather than any of that resource going to poor and working class people, people receive only more algorithmically-oriented tunes. Or, sometimes, garbage poems.

Lana Del Rey soaking up the fandom in Brazil. (Raphaelp18)

It may sound like a stretch, but using pop culture to disenfranchise the masses is as American as funding offshore coups. According to Marshall McLuhan, Chris Hedges, Edward Said, bell hooks, and countless more, it’s a tried-and-true strategy in the Eurocentric structure’s playbook to sell art back to people once repackaged with normative moralistic propaganda. Disney is one of the United States’s favorite information machines, pushing colonial thought and behavior worldwide. Poet and author Kaveh Akbar spoke about this at Green Apple Books on the Park in late January 2024 with friend and fellow critical writer Tommy Orange, pointing out Marvel movies and The Lord of the Rings as franchises trading in “let’s stop the bad guy to maintain the status quo” values, all while bolstering reactionary armed damage to Black, brown, or in Thanos’s case, purple villains.

Poetry is obviously a lot less popular these days than blockbuster movies, or even novels. Still, there are thriving spoken word and literary communities throughout the Bay Area and abroad. San Francisco-based writer Antony Fangary calls it a golden age of poetry. Tapping in with small readings, presses, and booksellers is a wonderful way to engage with those poets, fantastic chances to encounter a new story told through a duplex or a ghazal.

But there’s nothing poetic about a private jet, nor wealth management companies nor celebrity worship. I don’t have anything specifically against the music of Swift, Drake, and Del Rey. Yet there are poets who are tortured, such as Bay Area writers Jess Semaan and Halim Madi whose families are in Syria and Lebanon while United States-funded bombs tear through the countryside. It’s not a cute look to veer out of one’s lane just to fuck it up for people who are in that space working tirelessly to dismantle the systems that these same artists are paid fabulously to keep strong. Perhaps instead of taking the mic to announce another forgettable album, Swift could’ve taken the stage to demand a ceasefire in Ghaza. Then she might’ve related a bit to what poetry is all about.