Monday, May 12, 2025

Invisible Strings: 113 poets respond to the songs of Taylor Swift, edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty


  

Invisible Strings is a vibrant anthology that contains the poems of 113 poets who drew their inspiration from Taylor Swift’s songs.  

  I was dumbfounded and intrigued when Kristie Frederick Daugherty said:“Knowing your blog as I do, I really think you will enjoy it.”

  She was right. I have trouble finding poetry I care about, but this anthology struck a chord with me. In fact, I started to listen to some of Taylor Swift’s songs after I read the book.

 These poems share universal topics related to friendship, love, grief, living a life of authenticity and so many of the emotions that make us human.

    Invisible Strings haunted me. I wanted to hold it in my hands, to carry it with me and read it anywhere. I wondered if they had it at my beloved library. On the same day I requested it, they gave it to me.

   I will share a fragment from the poem “Hark, the Raucous Heiress Speaks” by Shikha Malaviya

 “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 plies.”

  So many of us know what it feels like to be sick of the condescending words directed at us for making our own choices, but Taylor Swift’s music is a response to the sort of cultural baggage running on us like water.

  I read the poems with a certain relief and fascination because as we leave behind the rough waves of this ocean life- the waves that shook us in ways that confused us or made us feel disposable- we become more stable and balanced in our own foundation. We are no longer shaken by the prejudices and the petty assumptions made by people who project envy and lack of self-assurance. It is the wisdom of the years carrying us forward, for this wisdom regales us with the gift to move on with enthusiasm beyond any kind of pettiness.

    


   I appreciate the diversity of voices and experiences and the richness of the poets’ imagination and creativity. Poetry is hard to describe because it is something that you relish and experience from your own perspective and imagination. It resonates with you or it does not. Poetry can create a space of freedom to feel and reflect on something, or to simply open up new ways of looking at situations.

 

 The variety of poems here excited me so much that I wanted to sit and write my own poems.

 

   Invisible Strings showcases an accomplished array of contemporary poets, including six Pulitzer Prize winners Dianne Seuss, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips, Rae Armantrout, Paul Muldoon, and Gregory Pardlo; New York Times best-selling poets Maggie Smith, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kate Baer, Amanda Lovelace, Tyler Knott Gregson and Jane Hirshfield; and National Book Critics Circle Award winners Mary Jo Bang and Laura Kasischke.

 


   I started reading one poem a day from the digital copy I received in exchange for an honest review. However, once I borrowed the physical book from the library I devoured the anthology in just one day.

  Take the leap into it. Nourish your insights, refresh your views, celebrate the synchronicities of those enigmatic moments that bring us together to become aware of the invisible strings that connect us… Add a blend of creative flavors to your inspiration and a dose of poetry to your daily routine.

Read poetry.

I will end the post with the fragment of a poem by Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky (“Of Flight”)


 Go now,

in sweetness. May

poetry find you, one day

and help you to empty the pockets of your mind.

May you find

--as one tortured poet knew—

that Icarus also flew.

 


 Kristie Frederick Daugherty is a poet and professor at the University of Evansville. She holds an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also a PhD candidate in literature/ criticism at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she is writing a dissertation that examines how Taylor Swift’s lyrics intersect with contemporary poetry.

 

 Feel free to read my latest poem here.