Once again, Taylor Swift mania is gripping the world as the Kansas City claimed pop star is rolling out both a new album and a marriage to the local heartthrob, Travis Kelce. Northwest. Missouri State University certainly has its own Swifty Club. It's also got a published poet on faculty whose work deals with Swift's contribution to the American songbook.
That poet is English Professor John Gallaher, who says he's not actually a swifty himself, "I am not a fan, but I do have a few of the albums. I, as an older guy, I really only bumped into Taylor Swift's music in her last few albums when she turned a little bit more indie, so Folklore and Evermore."
Nevertheless, poets across the country, especially at academic colleges, couldn't help but feel that Swift was speaking to them when she released her last album, The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD). Seeing the album's title, long suffering English professors began to ask, is Swift one of us? A collection of poets embarked on a project organized by poet and editor Christie Frederick Doherty to Penn and Anthology that responded back to Swift offering poems, which are inspired by her songs.
Gallagher got the invite to participate and he said yes, "When the email came to me, I was actually listening to The Tortured Poets Department at the gym. So I thought that was kind of funny and so I was like well if I'm actually listening to this album, I might as well, you know, take it up."
We invited Gallagher to share his ode to Taylor Swift and he accepted, here's his poem, entitled, or Barbara Stanwick in Double Indemnity, which appears in the anthology invisible strings.
"Remember the Thunderbird with the top down Love asks, because love has a tight schedule. You have to act slow. How about a flower? I have a fondness for blue. Blue flowers just sow on a balcony over a city, and love is draping over the credenza. Maybe a cocktail, Love asks and you stumble at the door. Maybe love is suggesting a drive.
You always thought love would do the carrying, but it's been you all along for whatever it was constructed by, what it's looking like, and what you think of things. It's a kind of contortion. It's the song everyone's talking about, playing soundtrack gold as if every word were replaced by its history.
Maybe this is a war movie, Love says. Maybe that's the only kind of movie there is. I've written that movie so many times as well, because at some point the villain always pauses. The villain has to tell you the plan. It's their genius plan. The movie lives for this moment, and here it is, a pale haze over the water that leaves you standing there by yourself questioning what came before like a horizon approaching, a winding way, or what one deserves or nothing at all. You're a mastermind."
That was John Gallagher sharing his poem, or Barbara Stanwick in Double Indemnity. It appears in a slightly altered version in the collection Invisible Strings: 113 poets respond to the songs of Taylor Swift.
