If you were one of the millions who waited up until midnight to listen to Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” album on repeat — and then reeled with the release of the expanded "Anthology" version — I know you didn't drag yourself into the office today to rehash my old seminar notes. You're tired, babe. Go pound a cold brew and we'll talk later. This story is for those who have avoided diving in deep because they are daunted by the MCU levels of lore embedded in the lyrics of, as NPR critic Ann Powers dubs her, "pop's leading writer of autofiction" (complimentary). If, in the hours leading up to release night, you felt your stomach sink when you heard "Tortured Poets" might be about a whole other ex than the one whose failings and betrayals you already didn't know a whole lot about to begin with? Let me re-introduce you to my old friend, the Speaker.
If you’ve been in a poetry class or workshop in the last — 50, I don’t know, 80, years? — you’ve encountered the Speaker: She’s the star of every poem, the character or persona to whom we attribute the words instead of the person whose name is above the title. (Because New Criticism, because intentional fallacy, because the weirdness of discussing the diction, rhythm and enjambment of your classmates’ sex lives aloud, in front of them, by name.) It's not the only way to read or critique a poem, of course, but it remains popular for many reasons.
In persona poems, the Speaker can be named or strongly implied to be an actual character, fictional or historical — you probably read Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" in school, you know this move. But even in poems presumed confessional, the Speaker can be a handy little imaginary friend to project the goings-on in the poem upon: Jackson in your workshop didn’t steal a bottle of nail polish from the bathroom of his one-night stand and then write a poem about it — "the Speaker” did. And just like that, it's easier to examine the color the Speaker palmed in the morgue-like glow of the medicine cabinet light and suggest that Orchid You Not might be the more appropriate choice for that Speaker's circumstances than Don't Take Me for Garnet without first sneaking a peek at Jackson's fingers.
Once the Speaker is involved, the individual truth in a poem — or a Taylor Swift song — can take precedence over the facts of its inspiration. It gives us all a little breathing room between biography and the work of art crafted from it, depending on how honest the poet feels like getting during the post-reading wine-and-cheese meet-and-greet. (Some poets are adamant that they are always the speaker of their own poems, and good for them! Some of us enjoy a little plausible deniability upon the page.)
Taylor Swift, chair of the Tortured Poets Department as of midnight, enjoys no such cover, though her storytelling, not only within individual songs and albums but across her body of work, is sophisticated enough to demand it. Instead, every lyric is recapped as a presumed confession, combed for autobiographical Easter eggs and compared, true crime Reddit-style, to the forensic files of her life and loves, from the soft public launches of new boyfriends to the breathless breakup speculations, not to mention the compelling drama of her highly atypical working life. I do not wish to get in the middle of all of that (though I love the industry parts). I understand she crafts intricate storylines for her highly engaged audience that deliberately involve elements of autobiography. The interactivity is the point. I'm not suggesting anyone discount that. But for those who find the inside-baseball discourse around her body of work daunting because there’s a learning curve that goes back to John Mayer and well, no thank you, this is a handy way to dig into Taylor Swift’s songs beyond their surface while not tracking the details of her personal life at all.
I listen with the assumption that Taylor Swift is singing as a persona — created and animated by her, of course, but a made thing, a fictional apparatus that exists apart from her to dramatize what she wants to say with her work. I think about what the Speaker in a song is saying, doing, revealing; I ponder the choices Swift has made for the Speaker. I can even presume there may be a different speaker created for every album — or even for each song. It helps that I'm not tempted to look up a famous ex-lover I truly could not pick out of a police lineup to see if he really gives "tattooed golden retriever." It's enough for me to appreciate a killer ironic image revealing some truth of how the Speaker experiences that particular intimate moment. I recommend this approach if you're burned out by the extended franchise storytelling dominating so much of pop culture today and think Swift's albums are more of the same. You'll be pleasantly surprised, trust me. And you definitely don't have to start at the beginning, listen in order and do all the supplemental reading unless you want to.
Let me be clear about where the New Critic in me stops: I'm on record against the demand to always separate the art from the artist. Historically, that slogan has been used to let talented men off easy for their personal misdeeds while attributing women's artistic achievements to everyone involved but them. Like any artist, Swift's discography has personal context, and listening to her work can be a deeper, richer experience when you know something about the shape of her life. I love a good rock memoir, and in many ways, Swift has been releasing hers over years, one coded message at a time.
So does it make sense for the Speaker in "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart" to clearly be a star performer like her creator, to be in sequins under lights with "all the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting 'more'"? Sure. But a Speaker gives me the distance from Taylor Swift, billionaire mogul, to hear "I cry a lot but I'm so productive" — devastatingly juxtaposed against that upbeat tempo — and feel a specific and universal kinship to the voice of this woman, just another one of us grinding away in the office, taking care of business with a smile while our lives crumble quietly out of sight. When that Speaker sighs and spits, "try and come for my job," she sounds vulnerable to incursion. Taylor Swift herself isn't, not anymore. Even if the fascination with her as a celebrity and avatar eventually subsides from this peak, her body of artistic work will continue to speak for itself. That doesn't mean she can't continue to write convincingly for those of us who are.
