The Tortured Poet's Context
Of Prologues and Epilogues
Taylor Swift has always been a poet at heart.
This is something I have long maintained, and I feel that she has cemented her status as a poet, appropriately enough, in The Tortured Poets Department. I have been following her since I was about 13 years old, and I recognised in her then a somewhat a kindred spirit— a storyteller who was yearning to tell her stories and get them out into the world. Her fervent desire to write her own stories, and to sprinkle parts of her own life into her storytelling right from her debut made her lyrics feel intensely personal and relatable, even for a teenage boy across the world.
I grew up with Taylor, and along the way I accrued my own (less impressive) accomplishments. I am an author of multiple novels, a poet and a TEDx speaker on mental health. Most importantly— for our purposes— I am a teacher. An English teacher, to be precise. Analysing poetry is something I have studied, and which I teach regularly.
That is what I am aiming to do here: I am planning to take The Tortured Poets Department and analyse each song—not in terms of its musicality, but in terms of its poetic appeal. We'll be analysing the structure, the deeper meanings, the literary references, the reference to other songs of hers, the imagery, everything we would analyse in a poem. We would NOT, however, be speculating by name on which man each song has been written about. Speculation about that is rife about that on the Internet, and we do not need one more voice adding to that chorus. We will be talking about relationships, of course, because that is the subject of the songs, but we will not be using names and few real-world references, if possible. I think ascribing it simply to one person is doing a disservice to not just the song, but also to what we can take away from it.
With that prologue out of the way, let’s get into the epilogue of TTPD. Like with every Taylor Swift, album, TTPD has a prologue that gives the listener context to the songs that are to be heard. However, unusually, this time Taylor has not written the prologue, and instead it is a poem by Stevie Knicks. We’ll discuss Knicks later on in the album. Taylor has not written a prologue but she has, however, written an epilogue. I think that the epilogue is far more revealing of the work than the prologue, so let’s take a look.
Here it is in full:
In Summation: Summary Poem by Taylor Swift
At this hearing
I stand before my fellow members
of the Tortured Poets Department
With a summary of my findings
A debrief, a detailed rewinding
For the purpose of warning
For the sake of reminding
As you might all
unfortunately recall
I had been struck with a case
of a restricted humanity
Which explains my plea
here today of
temporary i n s a n i t y
You see, the pendulum swings
Oh, the chaos it brings
Leads the caged beast to do
the most curious things
Lovers spend years denying
what’s ill fated
Resentment rotting away
galaxies we created
Stars placed and glued
meticulously by hand
next to the ceiling fan
Tried wishing on comets.
Tried dimming the shine.
Tried to orbit his planet.
Some stars never
align.
And in one conversation,
I tore down the whole sky.
Spring sprung forth with
dazzling freedom hues
Then a crash from the skylight
bursting through
Something old, someone hallowed,
who told me he could be brand new
And so I was out of the oven
And into the microwave
Out of the slammer and into a tidal wave
How gallant to save the
empress from her gilded tower
Swinging a sword he could barely lift
But loneliness struck at that fateful hour
Low hanging fruit on his wine stained lips
He never even scratched the surface of me.
None of them did.
“In summation, it was not a love affair!”
I screamed while bringing my fists
to my coffee ringed desk
It was a mutual manic phase.
It was self harm
It was house and then
cardiac arrest.
A smirk creeps onto this poet’s face
Because it’s the worst men
that I write best.
And so I enter into evidence
My tarnished coat of arms
My muses, acquired like bruises
My talismans and charms
The tick, tick, tick of love bombs
My veins of pitch black ink
All’s fair in love and poetry
Sincerely, The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department
Honestly, this epilogue instantly gives the album a sense of direction and clarity, and it is saddening to me that most people haven’t read it, because it gives a real glimpse into the thought process behind the songs. Let’s dive into it.
The first thing we should note is the structure of the epilogue itself. In other albums, Taylor does not write a poem, it’s more a note from the author explaining the background of the work. She also ends it with her name. Here, that is markedly not the case. She’s giving us a poem, and the note is signed “The Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department”.
The very first line mentions a “hearing”. We instantly have the image of a woman, standing in front of a panel of wizened members, pleading her case to them. She’s presented to them a detailed account of everything that she had experienced. She’s reminded herself, and them, of everything that has occurred, and has told them what she has learned. She’s asking them to understand her actions, her circumstances, and how she felt less than a person (“a case of restricted humanity”). Like in a court case, she has entered a plea of temporary insanity to explain what some viewed as her ‘crimes’. There is a sense of intense persecution and guilt that is woven through the album, which may be why she feels she’s committed a crime, and why she feels the need to justify them.
The third verse says “the pendulum swings, oh the chaos it brings.” This line implies that something that was going well in her life has gone in the other direction, and it has brought a bunch of chaos with it. She refers to herself, in the abstract, as a “caged beast” (Not the last time in this album that she’ll refer to herself feeling trapped), and it leads them to do “curious things”. She’s saying that the irrational things she did were out of a sense of desperation, a lashing out of a beast trapped in a corner.
The next verse brings into focus the true cause for all this misery: a relationship that died. It was not a supernova, that exploded all at once, but instead the “galaxies were rotted away”. Two lovers, once happy with one another, spend years denying that their relationship is dying, and that resentment destroys any semblance of the life they once created. This astronomy metaphor continues to the next verse, where she says that these stars that once adorned their room, the beauty that made up their relationship, was something that had been meticulously and painstakingly built by hand.
She tried to wish, to pray, to do better. She tried to do things the way he wanted them to be (“orbit his planet”). She tried to “dim the shine”. This is probably a reference to the Midnights song, Bejeweled, where she sings of still having a shimmer and glow despite being forced to hide (“don’t put me in the basement”) . The implication here is that she tried to hide her shine, to hide her glow, and accommodate him in every way she could, but it didn’t matter, because, ultimately, “some stars never align”.
Finally, this section reaches a conclusion where “in one conversation, I tore down the whole sky”. The emphasis on I, that she was the one who tore down the sky, implies that she was the one who had to take the step to end the relationship. She had to be the one to destroy everything that they had built for so long. This line is also reminiscent of the beautiful and haunting song, Bigger Than The Whole Sky, which was also on Midnights.
The next verse is a transitional verse. She has burst forth from this relationship, full of “dazzling freedom hues.” Knowing what comes after this, it can be speculated here that this is just the immediate aftermath of the relationship where one feels the tremendous relief of the suffering having ended, and not much else. Now, while she is still feeling this relief, not even begun to process this pain, something “comes crashing through the skylight”. The line “Something old, something hallowed who told me he could be brand new.” Strongly implies that an old flame, maybe someone she has had an off-and-on relationship with, maybe someone she greatly admired, came back into her life with the promise of a new, perhaps better, relationship for her.
In the next verse, we are seeing how she views this new relationship. She uses a variation of “from the frying pan and into the fire” to illustrate how she’s going from one bad situation to the next. “Out of the slammer” will be referenced against directly later in the album, and she goes from jail (the “slammer”) and into a “tidal wave”, something that sweeps here away, overwhelms her completely. I feel like the next bit is sardonic where she says the man was “gallant to save the empress from her gilded tower” but at the same time swinging a sword he could barely lift. This statement is part of the trend established in “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” where she shows disdain for her new lover.
Taylor explicitly says that loneliness consumed her at that moment in time, perhaps claiming that this was the reason she fell so hard for this man. The phrase “low hanging fruit” is a phrase used to mean the most easily achieved tasks, which implies that she felt she was an easy target for this man. It’s a lovely image of fruit pairing with the wine on his lips, a way to say he fully consumed her.
“He never even scratched the surface of me. None of them did.”
I find this line perhaps very telling of Swift not just in the context of this album, but in the context of her entire career. By and large, she has been defined by whoever she is dating at that moment, and sometimes by the absence of anyone she is dating. A lot of the discourse is inevitable because her love life is the subject for a lot of her music. However what she’s declaring here is that none of these lovers were actually able to recognise her depths, or match up to her— which is perhaps the reason that none of them worked out.
Now we reach what I think is the most telling verse of this poem. She is telling us, directly and clearly, that her new relationship was NOT a love affair. She literally goes as far as to say that it was a “manic phase” and “self-harm”. It was “cardiac arrest” after her “house arrest” (another reference to imprisonment). Now, nobody in a healthy relationship would refer to their relationship as mania and self-harm, so Swift is well-aware that the relationship that she was so invested in was an unhealthy, toxic and self-destructive relationship. She’s saying that she was invested in it because it was self-destructive.
The next verse she declares “it’s the worst men I write the best”. There’s a lot of layers to this statement, so let’s dissect. The first is that this statement is, I feel, borne out through her entire discography. Look at Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve, Dear John, or All Too Well. The second layer is that she’s indicating to us, once more, that the songs in this album will be about someone she thinks is a terrible person. Considering the differences in tones between her writing about the two men in the poem, it’s safe to say that the terrible man she’ll be writing about is the new flame.
But I want to look at this statement in a larger context, a more artistic one. I don’t believe that this aspect is unique to just Taylor Swift. Every story is built on problems, on conflict. Doesn’t matter if it’s a fairytale to a multi-billion dollar franchise, conflict is the driving factor in every story. It’s what makes the story interesting. Therefore, it’s no surprise that artists going through pain and heartbreak often write the most beautiful poetry and songs. That begs the question: Should artists continuously suffer for their art? Should they constantly have to put themselves in discomfort and pain to keep producing art? I don’t think so, but that’s a longer discussion to be had.
We have finally reached the final verse! (It’s still going to take a while to end, sorry). As an aside, I love the rhyming in this verse, it’s the most “musical” of all the verses, the rest reads more like a poem than a song.
She has now submitted to us her “tarnished coat of arms”. A coat of arms is generally a symbol of dynasty or family, and the fact that is “tarnished” could imply that she knows her reputation, her public image has been stained. I love the next line, “My muses acquired like bruises, my talismans and charms.” She has turned these wounds of hers, this pain she has experienced, and made it her inspiration for her work, held on to it like it was a talisman that would save her. “Love bombs” is once again a reference to the manipulative nature of the new man in her life, which we will be seeing throughout the album. “Veins of pitch black ink” is a wonderful image that helps cement the idea that she is a poet, these songs have been circulating within her very body, and she has now bled them onto the page.
Finally, we end with “All’s fair in love and poetry.” Love and poetry are intricately linked, both in this album and in Taylor’s life, and everything involved in both can be justified.
(I’ve written several novels of fiction, and if you like my writing, check them out! My bestselling murder-mystery thriller is called The Only Way Out is Death, and my other books can be found here.)