poetry song analysis assignment

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March 23, 2018

15 poem and song pairings to liven up your poetry unit.

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This is a great resource! Thanks for sharing!

You are welcome! Any favorite pairings you would add?

I am teaching "This is America" by Childish Gambino with "Dream Boogie" by Langston Hughes. We'll see how it goes..

I am doing This is America and Let America be America Again. They kids (low performing 9th graders) picked up on the connection with "Make America Great Again."

Thanks for adding another pairing!

Love this list! I would also add "Mystic" by Sylvia Plath paired with Sarah MacLachlan's "Angel."

Hi! I am planning to use "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" as well.

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Brilliant! Thanks!

This is fabulous. Thank you!

A reach source, thank you!

I am doing This is America and Let America be America Again. They kids (low performing 9th graders) picked up on the connection with "Make America Great Again.!" !

Thanks for sharing .

Thanks for your kind information . i love reading your blog posts .

Your poems are great and help many around, Keep sharing .

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Using Poetic Devices in Songs for Teaching Students Poetry

Poetry , Secondary Literacy

If you are a teacher on the hunt for poetic devices in songs , then it seems as though you’ve discovered one of the best strategies for teaching students poetry!  Song lyrics are one of the most effective ways to engage students in your poetry unit.  They are also a great way to explore examples of poetic devices in popular culture.  In this blog post, you’ll learn how to use poetic devices in songs to teach students poetry .  You’ll also find a few lesson plan ideas and resources with examples of poetic devices in popular song lyrics.

How do you encourage learners to read poetry?

A few years ago, I took over a classroom for a teacher who was on maternity leave.  She was absolutely thrilled at the timing of her leave because she was just about to begin her unit on poetry .  “I hate poetry, and I don’t know how to teach it,” she admitted to me.  I was surprised by this – there are a lot of subjects I’m reluctant to teach, but I always found teaching students poetry to be rewarding.  Poetry is short, it is forgiving with grammar, and it relates to one of my students’ deepest passions: music.  

Of course, not every student enjoys the subjective nature of poetry .  A poem can be read with many different interpretations.  Depending on the student, this is either a dream or a nightmare!  It’s true that teaching poetry analysis can be challenging for students and teachers alike.  This is why it is a great idea to start within your students’ comfort zones .

Not every student feels comfortable with analyzing poetry , but almost all of them have an artist or song that they adore.  If you were to ask them what their favorite song is about, I’m sure they would have a lot to say!  They might even offer a few inferences based on their understanding of the artist’s biography or cultural references.  We can use this excitement to hook them on reading poetry .

How do you identify a poetic device?

To help learners to read poetry, you will first need to explore the elements of poetry with your students.  You will then need to teach them how to analyze a poem .  This will involve being able to identify a poetic device .   

To identify a poetic device, students will need to understand the terminology involved.  Some terms that can be helpful to know include: alliteration, anaphora, assonance, consonance, double entendre, enjambment, imagery, juxtaposition, metaphor, meter, mood, personification, simile, and tone (to name a few!)

To solidify essential terminology, you can facilitate a vocabulary word wall .  You can create templates for each poetic device and include a prompt to have students define the term and find an example.  You can also use these pre-made poetic device word wall templates , which include a comprehensive answer key to consolidate this activity.

Have each student fill out the vocabulary worksheets independently by creating individual workbooks.  Alternatively, you can turn this into a collaborative activity by having students define different terms in groups.  Students can then present their terms to the class before hanging them up on the word wall.

Once students have completed this activity, they will have a poetic device anchor chart in your classroom.  Students can refer to this anchor chart during the entire unit on poetry.

How do you teach poetry analysis?

Now that students have explored the terminology of poetic devices, they can dive deeper into poetry analysis .  To teach poetry analysis, you will need to show students how to annotate poetry .  You can continue to use students’ favorite song lyrics to hook them with this lesson.

You can use these informational handouts to teach poetry analysis .  These handouts will guide students through a lesson on the relationship between poetry and song lyrics .  It will also show students how to annotate poetry .  You can scaffold annotating poetry by modeling the process using the lyrics to “Therefore I Am” by  Billie Eilish.  This resource includes an annotated example that you can use for reference.  

Students can then select their own song lyrics to analyze.  You can use this free poetry analysis bookmark as an individual anchor chart for this activity.

Finding Examples of Poetic Devices in Songs

You can find virtually any type of figurative language in songs .  So long as there are lyrics, you will find poetic devices in every genre of music.

There are several resources online that explore poetic devices in songs :

• I especially like Repeat Replay’s Top Picks : Songs with Figurative Language .  This article highlights poetic devices in classic songs from the last few decades in music, including Simon and Garfunkel, Louis Armstrong, and Queen. 
• LiteraryDevices.Net also shares modern examples of poetic devices in songs, including Katy Perry and Demi Lovato. 
• Power Poetry also features a few poetic devices with examples that your students are sure to recognize!  If they are fans of Lana Del Ray, Taylor Swift, or Billie Eilish, then they will love exploring these examples.
• If your students are more mature, Rap Genius has an incredible glossary of literary devices in hip-hop songs .   Hip-hop and rap are rich sources for exploring the artful use of language.  Given the explicit nature of many songs within these genres, you will want to be sure that your classroom environment is a suitable place to share this resource.

Using Poetic Devices in Songs to Teach Poetry

If you’re a fan of teaching poetry, I hope this blog post has inspired a few new lesson plans and activities for your classroom .  If you’re not – I hope studying poetic devices in songs converts you!  It is sure to hook even your most reluctant learners and help make poetry a little more relevant to their lives.

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[…] in a playful and creative way.  You can also encourage students to use figurative language, poetic devices, or other elements of […]

[…] introductory lesson involves familiarizing students with poetic devices.  Being able to identify figurative language in poetry will help students further develop […]

Poetry Music Activities - Song Lyrics Assignments and Presentations Bundle

• $14 99 $14.99 Unit price /  per 

This poetry music activities, assignments, and presentations bundle will engage all your students in poetry analysis using song lyrics! Students will love this modern bundle of music-inspired poetry resources. Included are eye-catching presentations, poetry song lyrics assignments and projects, engaging activities, ready-to-print worksheets, and much more!

By purchasing this bundle, you are saving more than 30% compared to purchasing these items separately!

Included in this poetry music activities bundle:

Figurative Language Song Lyrics Poetry Presentation

Teach figurative language in song lyrics with this ready-to-use presentation. This slideshow uses   current music lyrics to teach literary devices   used in poetry like metaphor, simile, personification, alliteration, hyperbole, and more. This makes an excellent poetry introduction presentation to familiarize students with the common figurative language they will encounter in the poems they read. It will also engage and hook them into your poetry unit with the modern music examples provided!   Each slide includes a definition of the literary term as well as an example taken from modern lyrics.  

Some of the musical artists include Taylor Swift, Drake, Rihanna, John Legend, Dynamite, Billie Eilish, and many more, so you can be confident your students will be totally engaged. _________________________________________________________________________________________

Lyrical Breakdown Song Lyrics as Poetry Assignment

This final poetry project will hook all your students in!   Students will choose a song and analyze the lyrics for content, theme, and literary devices   following the detailed project instructions. With music as the topic, you know your students will be instantly engaged, and this project outlines everything they need to know to get started. Included:

• PowerPoint presentation slides to introduce the project to students. The presentation includes discussion questions, information about the two parts of the project, and rubric information to show what a strong response includes.
• Detailed student instructions for completing both sections of the assignment. The first section has student analyze their interpretation of the song lyrics (summary, title analysis, and theme), while the second section has them interpret the use of literary devices and figures of speech within the lyrics.
• Good copy graphic organizers for both sections
• An easy-to-use teacher rubric that makes grading the project quick and easy.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Literary Devices in Song Lyrics Examples Worksheets

Students will label figurative language in song lyrics with these fun assignments.   Students will read excerpts from popular songs and label figurative language examples of metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, alliteration, pun, oxymoron, and more .

• Three visually appealing assignment worksheet pages that include lines taken from popular song lyrics that contain literary devices. Students are required to label the figurative language used and provide an explanation for each. With lyrics from Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Camila Cabello, Sam Smith, and many others your students will be totally engaged.
• Detailed teacher answer keys with a detailed explanation for each type of figurative language used that will make grading or review quick and easy

Poetry Rap: Using Rap Song Lyrics to Teach Poetry

Using rap song lyrics to teach poetry   will help your students see how the two genres have a great deal in common. From sophisticated rhyme and rhythm, literary devices, lyricism, storytelling, theme, social commentary, and emotional impact, poetry and rap have many similarities. Students will use what they learn to compare Langston Hughes' poem "Mother to Son" with Tupac Shakur's song "Dear Mama" and then write their own rap lyrics. 

• A 26-slide PowerPoint presentation that uses rap song lyrics to teach poetry. The slides introduce the history of rap, discuss the 6 main commonalities between rap and poetry ( rhythm and rhyme, literary devices, lyricism, storytelling, theme, and emotional impact ), provide rap lyrics examples for each, and include video discussion prompts. (YouTube is required for opening videos in slideshow).
• A Tupac Hughes poetry rap comparison activity where students answer questions comparing Tupac Shakur's song "Dear Mama" with Langston Hughes' poem "Mother to Son." The poem and song share many elements and themes.
• A detailed answer key for the poetry rap comparison activity questions that make for easy grading or review.
• A creative writing assignment called "Writing Rap Rhymes" where students will write their own rap lyrics according to what they learned in the lesson.

Poetry Playlist Song Analysis Assignments

Students will analyze song lyrics as poetry by examining the lyrics of three songs and responding to comprehension and analysis questions. Included are three poetry song analysis assignments, detailed teacher answer keys, and presentation slides to review answers with students. 

• Three poetry song analysis assignments that have students   examine song lyrics as poetry with three popular songs:   Imagine   by John Lennon,   Lose you to Love Me   by Selena Gomez, and   Midnight Rain   by Taylor Swift . Each assignment includes five analysis questions that require students to refer back to the song lyrics to show text evidence.
• Detailed teacher answer keys for the poetry song analysis assignments. The answers include text evidence and are useful for grading or class review. 
• A 16-slide PowerPoint presentation that can be used to review answers with the class.

The Soundtrack of My Life Poetry Final Project

The Soundtrack Of My Life assignment   allows students to make connections between their own lives and the lyrics of the songs they love and to analyze song lyrics as poetry . Even those students who find poetry challenging will be able to connect to this assignment.

• A PowerPoint presentation that will introduce students to each element of the poetry song lyrics assignment. The presentation includes discussion questions, information about the two parts of the project, and rubric information to show what a strong response includes.
• Detailed student instructions for completing both sections of the assignment. The first section has students make text-to-self connections between the lyrics of three songs and their own life (to design the soundtrack of their life). The second section has students examine one of the songs in more detail using poetry analysis techniques. They will summarize the poem, examine the theme, locate literary devices, and consider who might connect to these lyrics.
• A brainstorming page with prompts that will help students choose the three songs they want to highlight on their soundtrack
• Two good copy graphic organizers for both sections of the assignment where they will share their text-to-self connections and poetry song analysis
• An easy-to-use teacher rubric that makes grading the poetry song lyrics assignment quick and easy

>>>Please note the song lyrics are not included in the purchase for copyright reasons, but links are provided to the lyrics online***

What teachers are saying about this poetry song lyrics assignments bundle:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This unit was   AMAZING !! I could not believe how many high-quality   lessons   were included for such a great price. My students groaned when I told them we would be learning poetry, but by the end were   disappointed the unit was ending ! I can't recommend it enough. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I'm teaching an essentials English course for 3 weeks this summer. It's been difficult finding things that keep the students interested since the class is 2 hours and 15 minutes long. They've been   engaged the entire time   that I've been teaching with these resources! The PowerPoint is   easy for them to understand , and the worksheets are also very clean with clear directions. Letting the kids use music with the literary devices has definitely   helped to break up the monotony   of such a long class. Love it!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This is one of my   all-time favorite   purchases! This has been so   effective and engaging   for my students! Thank you for the excellent quality as well as   top-notch song selections!

>>> All of the resources in this bundle are also included in my   Poetry Resource Bundle . Click   click here   to learn more.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Pair this poetry writing booklet with our poetry annotation guide:

→   How to Annotate Poetry Student Guide

© Presto Plans

➡️ Want 10 free ELA resources sent to your inbox?   Click here!

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15 Fun Poetry Activities for High School

April 8, 2019 //  by  Lindsay Ann //   3 Comments

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High School Students + Fun Poetry Activities

If you’re an English teacher, looking for fun poetry activities for high school or middle school students, I’ve got you covered. I’m opening up my poetry toolbox and sharing some of my favorite (and most successful) poetry games and activities!  Whether you’re looking for a stand-alone lesson or something more, there’s something here for everyone.

Pop Sonnets

The creation of pop sonnets is one of my favorite poetry activities to use in conjunction with the reading of a Shakespearean play, but it can be used as a stand-alone lesson. The hook is that modern-day songs have been turned into Shakespearean sonnets. You can study one of Shakespeare’s sonnets and ask students to modernize it. Then, work in reverse by re-working a modern-day song as a sonnet. Or, just use this as a “hook” to help students feel more comfortable with Shakespearean language.   Take a look and thank me later.

Songs as Poetry

Studying modern-day songs is a great way to teach about figurative language and poetic devices while studying poetry. Try reading the lyrics, but omitting or re-writing the metaphors and talking about the change in message/meaning. Look for examples of imperfect rhyme in one of Eminem’s cleaner songs. Study poems as paired texts . Analyze lines from a famous soundtrack. Ask students to bring in their favorite songs and discuss. So. Many. Options!

Here are 12 great songs to analyze if you aren’t sure where to start:

• “Across the Universe” by the Beatles
• “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan
• “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift
• “Chasing Pavements” by Adele
• “Infinity” by Mariah Carey
• “Stereo Hearts” by Gym Class Heroes
• “Counting Stars” by One Republic
• “It’s Time” by Imagine Dragons
• “Imagine” by John Lennon
• “Mad World” by Gary Jules
• “Zombie” by The Cranberries
• “Letter to Me” by Brad Paisley

Slam Poetry

Students need to know that poetry is not dead. It’s living. It’s breathing. It’s storytelling. It’s cool. In April, my classes come alive with the magic of slam poetry as students become authors and performers. They re-discover wonder and learn to let down their guard. They learn that there is intersectionality between their story and the stories of others. They are appreciated. They appreciate others. When I use this fun poetry activity for high school students , my classroom really becomes a true community.

Grab my slam poetry “mini” unit to get your students started with slam poetry!

Not sure which slam poems are school-appropriate and engaging? Here are 40 of my favorite slam poems !

Paint Chip Poetry

This poetry writing activity is FREE if you’re willing to grab some paint chips from your local hardware store, preferably ones with multiple colors in one. Or, Amazon sells an awesome paint chip poetry “game.”

• Have students use one of the color names as the title for a poem.
• Have students write poems in stanzas, using each of the color names as inspiration.
• Have students use all of the color names somewhere in a poem.
• Have students choose two contrasting colors and make a poem of contrasts.
• Have students choose two complimentary colors and make a poem.
• Have students choose a color and write an identity poem.

Blackout Poetry

This is an oldie, but goodie poetry writing exercise for high school students. Copy a page or two from a whole class novel. Or better yet, choose a completely divergent text, maybe a science textbook or page from a dictionary. Students string together words on the page to form a poem, and black-out the rest of the words. If they want to go above and beyond, they can create an original illustration to accompany their blackout poem.

Book Spine Poetry

Take your students to the library (or have them browse a site like Goodreads) and challenge them to create poems from book titles. Each title becomes a line in the poem. An optional challenge: have students choose (or randomly draw) a theme, and their poem has to relate to their chosen theme. If you’re looking for some FREE templates, I’ve got you covered: Click Here !  I created these templates as a quick fun poetry activity for high school sophomores after my librarian told me that having my classes pull so many books would be a pain to re-shelve.

Poetry Tasting

A lot of teachers are loving my reading progressive dinner stations . Poems are short and accessible texts that always rock when used with this activity.

Here are some options for poetry stations, a fun group poetry activity: 

• Choose a certain kind of poem or a certain poetic movement to explore at ALL the stations, i.e. the ghazal or Imagist poetry.
• Choose different kinds of poems or movements to explore at each station.
• Choose poems related to ONE thematic idea.
• Choose poems written by teenagers.
• Choose “famous” poems.
• Choose slam poems.

Poetry Transformations

If you’re studying word choice and tone in poetry, why not have students transform a poem, switching from one tone to another? Then, have students write a reflection analyzing why they made 4-5 important changes.

Found Poems

This poetry activity is exactly what it sounds like. Have students choose / cut-out words from magazines to form “found” poems. Or, have students listen to a TED talk or story, writing down a certain # of words they hear. Then, ask them to use these words + ones of their own to write an original poem.

Easter Egg Poems

If ’tis the season, you might as well use those plastic easter eggs you may have lying around. Put “poetry inspiration” in each egg. At the very least, I suggest a word or phrase. If you want to go “all-in,” create a combination of the items below:

• Random household objects, i.e. a piece of string, a bead
• Newspaper/magazine clippings
• Words/phrases
• Famous first lines
• A “mentor” poem, copied and folded up

Tell students that their challenge is to write a poem inspired by these objects. Or, if you prefer, have students incorporate words / ideas from each object in their poem.

Favorite Poem Project

If you’ve never seen the site “ Favorite Poem Project ,” I suggest checking it out as a poetry unit resource. The site’s goal is to interview a variety of different people about their “favorite poems.” In each short video, an individual shares a personal connection to his/her poem and reads the poem out loud.

After being a fan of this site for some time, I decided to have my students make their own “favorite poem” videos . They explored, chose a poem that they liked “best,” and created videos on Flipgrid discussing their thoughts about the poem and reading it aloud. These videos were then viewed by classmates. Everyone enjoyed this a lot!

Metaphor Dice

Poems as Mentor Texts

Using mentor texts for writing is a powerful strategy for poetry instruction, yet one that I find myself “skipping” because there isn’t time. I have to remind myself to “make” the time because it’s important. If we’re going to spend time analyzing texts, it only makes sense to have students try to use those writing moves in their own writing. After all, students should be writing frequently, and not always for an assessment grade.

Here are 12 great mentor poems if you’re not sure where to start:

• “ We Real Cool ” by Gwendolyn Brooks
• “ Montauk ” by Sarah Kay
• “ This is Just to Say ” by William Carlos Williams
• “ Mother to Son ” by Langston Hughes
• “ My Father’s Hats ” by Mark Irwin
• “ Chicago ” by Carl Sandburg
• “ Entrance ” by Dana Gioia
• “ My Father is an Oyster ” by Clint Smith
• “ If ” by Rudyard Kipling
• “ Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market ” by Pablo Neruda
• “ The Bean Eaters ” by Gwendolyn Brooks
• “ The Summer I Was Sixteen ” by Geraldine Connolly
• “ Where I’m From ” by George Ella Lyon (As a bonus, students can submit their poems to the “I am From” project. ) p.s. If you’re looking for ready-to-use templates,  here you go !

Magnetic Poetry

A fun activity to fill extra class time, or just for fun: magnetic poetry . Give each student (or pairs of students) a handful of magnetic poetry pieces. See what they come up with. Take pictures and display around the room.

Interactive Poetry Bulletin Board

Sort of like magnetic poetry, but with a twist, it’s fun to set-up an interactive bulletin board as a fun poetry activity for high school students to try before or after class. You can do this in several different ways.

• Poem of the day + a “feel-o-meter” for students to rate the poem on a scale from “mild sauce” to “hot sauce.” You can have students use push pins to vote.
• Large scale magnetic poetry + a bulletin board becomes “push pin poetry.” You choose the words. Students move them around to form poems.

Hey, if you loved this post, I want to be sure you’ve had the chance to grab a FREE copy of my guide to stream l ined grading . I know how hard it is to do all the things as an English teacher, so I’m over the moon to be able to share with you some of my best strategies for reducing the grading overwhelm. 

Click on the link above or the image below to get started!

About Lindsay Ann

Lindsay has been teaching high school English in the burbs of Chicago for 19 years. She is passionate about helping English teachers find balance in their lives and teaching practice through practical feedback strategies and student-led learning strategies. She also geeks out about literary analysis, inquiry-based learning, and classroom technology integration. When Lindsay is not teaching, she enjoys playing with her two kids, running, and getting lost in a good book.

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[…] Dice: I wrote about this game in my previous blog post about poetry fun, but couldn’t pass by another opportunity to give it a […]

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[…] Teach your high schoolers to annotate using poetry. Have fun with magnetic poetry online! Incorporate art, theatre, or music with black-out poetry, songs as poetry, or poetry slams. Celebrate Robert Frost’s birthday […]

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Every Proper Noun on Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department , Charted and Annotated

Who are lucy and jack and sarah and hannah and aimee we break it all down..

The premise of Name Check , an occasional Slate feature, is that as good a way as any to understand an album is to make a list of all the proper nouns mentioned on it and break them down into charts. On the occasion of the release of Taylor Swift’s 11 th album, The Tortured Poets Department , and its accompanying anthology of bonus songs—thanks for the extra homework, Taylor—we’re ready to crunch the numbers.

By our math, TTPD contains 46 proper nouns, running the gamut from Charlie Puth to Aston Martin. Be warned, it’s sometimes a judgment call to decide what constitutes a proper noun, so we did the best we could—we decided, for example, that LOML (which can be heard in the song “LOML,” naturally) is not a proper noun, but that CPR (which Swift sings about on “So Long, London”) is. LOML stands for “love of my life” (and also, spoiler alert, “loss of my life”), but lots of people have loves of their lives, whereas CPR refers to, like, a pretty specific set of procedures. Also, hopefully we caught all the proper nouns, but sorry in advance if not: We had only a day to scan the lyrics of 31 songs! And with that out of the way, let’s begin with a bird’s-eye view.

You can say you’re a “people person,” but do you have the data to back it up? Taylor Swift does: “People” was far and away the biggest category of proper nouns on her album. Here’s the complete list, with some brief annotations.

• Aimee: A bully to whom the song “thanK you aIMee” is addressed. It’s unclear whether she is a stand-in for a real person, but the song’s capitalization indicates that the track is also about another sometimes foe of Swift’s, Kim Kardashian. • Aristotle: The Ancient Greek philosopher. • The Blue Nile: A Scottish band whose songs include “The Downtown Lights”—Swift name-drops both the group and the song on “Guilty as Sin?”* • The Bolter: Most likely refers to Idina Sackville, a British aristocrat who was married and divorced five times. • Cassandra: In Greek mythology, she was given the gift of prophecy but cursed to be believed by no one. (In this case, the unheeded warning is pretty clearly meant to be the one Swift tried to give us about Kanye West.) • Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus: On the song of the same name, Swift sings about an ex-lover who hooked up with “somebody … named Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” suggesting that the ex regularly hooked up with different women and men. • Clara Bow: The silent film star and original “it” girl . • Daddy: Either Swift’s actual father, Scott Swift, or some imagined father figure. • Eve: Biblical first woman, married to Adam, ate the forbidden fruit, etc. • Jack: Fans are pretty sure this is Jack Antonoff, Swift’s longtime producer. • Lost Boys: From the Peter Pan story. • Lucy: Fans think this is Lucy Dacus , friend and collaborator of Swift’s. • Stevie Nicks: The singer-songwriter and onetime member of Fleetwood Mac. • Peter: As in Pan, the boy who never wanted to grow up. • Charlie Puth: The funniest and most spit take–inducing proper noun on the album has to be pop star Puth, who is paid a backhanded compliment on the song “The Tortured Poets Department.” • Sarahs and Hannahs: In “But Daddy I Love Him,” Swift sings about “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best/ Clutchin’ their pearls, sighing, ‘What a mess.’ ” These Sarahs and Hannahs are stand-ins for a larger group of fans that Swift perceives to be judging her. • Patti Smith: The musician, poet, painter, and memoirist. • Mr. Steal Your Girl: On “LOML,” Swift sings about someone who is a “cinephile in black and white … Mr. Steal Your Girl, then make her cry.” While it’s not an overt reference, it calls to mind the popular 2014 song “Mr. Steal Your Girl” by Trey Songz, an artist who has unfortunately been accused of sexual assault multiple times. (Songz has denied the allegations.) • Taylor Swift: You should know who this is. In “Clara Bow,” Swift sings her own name in her lyrics, worrying that her fame could be similarly fleeting. • Dylan Thomas: The 20 th -century Welsh poet.

Many of the people Swift mentions are names you’ll recognize, from Patti Smith to Taylor Swift herself. Congratulations to Taylor Swift for finally being mentioned in a Taylor Swift song! (Well, she was also mentioned on songs like “22” and “Look What You Made Me Do,” but those mentions were spoken, not sung.) Some of the other references to people on the album are more vague—the “Lucy” and “Jack” mentioned on “The Tortured Poets Department” don’t get last names, but it’s not hard to figure out who they are. Then there are references to people from mythology and religion, like Cassandra and Eve. And there are some people who are sort of made up but not quite fictional? The Hannahs and Sarahs, the Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus—let’s call these hypothetical people.

The Sarahs and the Hannahs loom large both in Swift’s mind and on the album, where they outnumbered the Stevie Nickses and Dylan Thomases—that is to say, more people on the album were referred to without a last name than with. For anyone wondering, we counted the Bolter and the Lost Boys among the no-last-namers but Mr. Steal Your Girl as among the surnamed.

For an album named after tortured poets, does it actually mention any? Yes, at least two, and maybe more, depending on your definition of poet . Thomas and Smith are the only traditional poets mentioned on the album, but if songwriters count as poets, there are a bunch more, including Jack, Lucy, Puth, and the chairman of the Tortured Poets Department herself. To clarify the status of Mr. Steal Your Girl once more, we counted him as a songwriter because he is presumably one and the same as Trey Songz. Aristotle, while confusingly being the author of Poetics , was not a poet, so he didn’t make the list. While it’s possible that Taylor Swift’s dad and Clara Bow write or wrote poetry, we don’t know about it, so it doesn’t count, and neither, sorry to say, do any hypothetical poems written by our hypothetical cast of characters.

Swift deservedly has a reputation for writing about the men in her life, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t write about women too—on this album, she evenly splits her mentions of men and women. A caveat: In the song “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” we counted Sam as a man’s name, though it could just as easily be a woman’s.

Onward to the things, which we decided to break up into concepts, times, works of art, and tangible things. To get ahead of this, please forgive us for categorizing dogs as a thing, but in our defense, where else would they have fit?

• American Dreams: Basically the idea that anyone can be happy and successful in America. • Christian: Related to Christianity, a major religion. • CPR: A technique for resuscitating someone’s heartbeat in an emergency. • Jehovah’s Witness: Someone who practices a denomination of Christianity known for its evangelism … but apparently not for its menswear, if you go by Swift’s opinion in “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.”

• February: A month in the winter, can be cold. • Saturday: A day of the week. • Sunday: Also a day of the week, the one after Saturday. Singing about the weekend might actually represent a shift for Swift: Remember when she was always singing about Tuesdays ? • Christmas: A Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus.

Works of Art

• “The Downtown Lights”: The Blue Nile song mentioned on “Guilty as Sin?”* • American Pie : A teen sex comedy from 1999. • Grand Theft Auto : A video game whose object is to steal cars.

Tangible Things

• Aston Martin: A luxury car. • Golden retrievers: A dog breed. • Kens: Dolls that are the male counterpart to Barbie. Ryan Gosling is just them.

To make it up to you for calling dogs a thing, here’s a special chart all about the dogs Swift refers to on this album. Surprise: She refers to only one type, golden retrievers, so they get the whole pie! Dog breeds are not technically proper nouns, but we’d feel even more guilty if we left them out altogether.

Now on to places, which we decided to break into geographic categories and the majority of which hardly require any explanation.

• America: Doesn’t get more American than this. • Central Park Lake: The lake within New York’s Central Park. • Chelsea Hotel: A hotel in New York historically associated with 20 th -century artists. • Destin: A city in Florida. • Florida: A state. • L.A.: Los Angeles, the California city. • Manhattan: The most well-known borough of New York City. • Texas: Another state.

• London: The city in England. • The Heath: Most likely Hampstead Heath, a public space in London.

• The moon: It orbits the Earth, was recently seen eclipsing the sun, and is mentioned on the song “The Prophecy.”

• The Black Dog: A bar mentioned in the song of the same name. Is it a real bar? Where? Unclear. Also a common metaphor for depression.

Last year, Swift and her British boyfriend Joe Alwyn broke up, an event she is presumably referring to in the song “So Long, London.” Does the data back up Swift’s turn away from Great Britain back toward her homeland? Indeed it does. That’s our Miss Americana.

Correction, April 22, 2024: This article originally misidentified the Blue Nile’s “The Downtown Lights” as “Downtown Nights.”

Come for the Torture, Stay for the Poetry: This Might Be Taylor Swift’s Most Personal Album Yet

By Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield

Poets only want love if it’s torture. And when the poet is Taylor Swift , you always have to figure love and torture are never more than a few verses apart. Taylor became a legend as the poet laureate of teen romance. But that was kid stuff compared to the adult heartbreak of her stunning new album, The Tortured Poets Department . A year after getting out of a six-year relationship, Taylor’s got bad men on the brain. But they’ve always been her specialty. As she notes here, in a poem she includes in the physical edition, “It’s the worst men that I write best.”

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Even by Swiftian standards, she gets wildly ambitious with her songwriting here. This is an album that begins with an introductory poem by Stevie Nicks . The title song’s chorus goes, “You’re not Dylan Thomas/I’m not Patti Smith/This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel/We’re modern idiots.” In other words, it’s the small-town teen romance of “White Horse” updated for the big old city. Until you remember that the tortured poet Dylan Thomas famously died at his favorite Greenwich Village bar — which happened to be the White Horse Tavern. That’s the level she’s working on here.

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You can hear that it’s an album made in the aftershock of the Eras Tour, which was bigger than even Taylor could have wildest-dreamed. One revelation from the Eras Tour was how epic the Folklore and (especially) Evermore songs sounded, when ringing out loud in a stadium. It sounds as though Swift was shocked at how it felt to play her quietest songs live and hear how gigantic they could be given enough room. So Tortured Poets feels like Swift writing those Folkmore -and-(especially)- Evermore ballads, but giving them that stadium power in the studio.

As for torture — she’s got loads of that. From the sound of Midnights , everybody figured her relationship with Joe Alwyn was a happy little “Sweet Nothing,” except now she portrays it as more like “Tolerate It” with a side order of “Bejeweled.” This is an album nobody saw coming, even though she gave so many signs.

But if you’re stuck on happy endings, why the hell are you listening to a Taylor album? “The Alchemy” is an outlier on an album where her heart goes 1 for 16. “ My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”and “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” are witty reports on falling in love with needy men who don’t reciprocate. As the doll sings in “My Boy,” “Pull my string and I’ll tell you that he runs because he loves me.”

Some songs drop hints that dare you to take them as straight-up autobiography. Is she singing about Joe Alwyn here, Lucy Dacus there, Matty Healy everywhere? For many fans, her romance with Healy was already retconned out of their brains, yet she scatters not-necessarily-subtle clues. Like when an ex reminds her of the Eighties U.K. cult band, the Blue Nile: “He sent me ‘Downtown Nights,’ I hadn’t heard it in a while.” (That’s the song Healy basically rewrote for The 1975’s “Love If We Made It.” Do we even need to mention the song is from 1989?) But as she says bluntly in her poem, “He never even scratched the surface of me. None of them did.” 

“Swift wrote two of the nastiest highlights solo, “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” and“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”   Aaron Dessner worked on the softer tracks—“So Long, London,” “loml”—while Jack Antonoff provides the big bam boom, as in the synth-disco Vince Clarke homage “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.”   Post Malone sounds great in the single “Fortnight,” just as Florence Welch does in “Florida” (“it’s a hell of a drug”), with its dynamic chorus, “Fuck me up, Florida!” When it comes to a one-line summary of how it feels to be single and jaded in your 30s, you can’t do much better than “My friends all smell like weed or little babies.”

“The Manuscript” is a bonus track, but it’s one of the pivotal songs. (Taylor likes to do it that way—ask any fan of “New Romantics” or “Right Where You Left Me.”) A young woman falls for a charming older man: “He said if the sex was half as good as the conversation, soon they’d be pushing strollers/But soon it was over.” Looking back at it later, she still isn’t clear how she feels about this story.. (“He said since she was so wise beyond her years everything had been aboveboard/She wasn’t sure.”) But it’s her manuscript, and her life to write, just as it’s her name to disgrace. It’s not really a song about a man — it’s about a woman starting to see herself as the author, instead of just a character in her own life.

“The Black Dog” is another crucial bonus ballad, with a classic Nashville-worthy premise: her ex forgot to change his phone settings post-breakup, so she can still track his movements via GPS, and being Taylor, she does. (“You forgot to turn it off”? Yeah right — he’s a guy in a Taylor Swift song, which means he planned it that way.) She sees him walk into a bar called The Black Dog, where he hears one of their songs on the jukebox. (By the pop-punk troopers the Starting Line.). But he’s trying to pick up a girl who’s too young to recognize the tune. 

Stevie Nicks’ introductory poem (only in the physical edition) comes from last summer, dated August 13, with Stevie writing, “For T—and me…” It’s the kind of rock & roll melodrama Stevie knows well: “She looked back from her future/And shed a few tears/He looked into his past/And actually felt fear.” Stevie is a guiding angel all over these songs—so it’s a powerful moment when Taylor slips her into the killer finale “Clara Bow.” It’s an ode to a tragic 1920s movie star, which is definitely Stevie’s kind of thing. (One of her greatest recent songs is her ode to “Mabel Normand.”) 

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But at the end of the song, the washed-up ingenue listens as her replacement gets a new set of compliments: “You look like Taylor Swift in this light/We’re loving it/You’ve got edge/She never did.” It’s the nightmare of “Nothing New” come true — people forget about yesterday’s ingenue. But this isn’t merely a song about show-biz. It’s about any adult who wonders why — after all these years — she still feels pain or terror when someone else lights up the room.

The Tortured Poets Department has a Reputation edge to it, and like Reputation , it sounds designed to confuse many people who try to decode it before listening. In her “Summary Poem,” Taylor calls it “a debrief, a detailed rewinding/For the purpose of warning/For the sake of reminding.” But anyone can hear that deep in the music. All over these songs, Taylor lives up to her credo that “all’s fair in love and poetry.” But as she shows in The Tortured Poets Department , both can get brutal.

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A Brief Guide to Who’s Who on Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets’

Ex-boyfriends may be alluded to. Travis Kelce, too, fans believe. And some actual poets.

• Share full article

By Madison Malone Kircher

When Taylor Swift released “The Tortured Poets Department,” on Friday at midnight, her fan base quickly got to work decoding the album, looking for layers of meaning and insight into Ms. Swift’s life. Of course, that includes the pop singer’s romantic history.

Like many of her past works, the songs on this album — which features over a dozen additional tracks as part of an extended album called “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” — are laden with names and references, many of which appear to be to real people from Ms. Swift’s universe and the literary canon. At least two poets, Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith, are mentioned.

Here’s a look at some of those characters.

Matty Healy

Plenty of lines from “Tortured Poets” have fans guessing that certain songs — including “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” “The Black Dog” and “Down Bad” — may be about Matty Healy , the frontman for the 1975 who was spotted out and about with Taylor on several occasions last spring. One clue Swifties are latching on to: On the “The Black Dog,” Ms. Swift refers to the band the Starting Line. Mr. Healy covered one of the band’s songs while he was touring last spring. And then there is the much-discussed reference to a person Ms. Swift describes as a “tattooed golden retriever" on the album’s title track. Mr. Healy seems to fit the bill, according to her fans.

Travis Kelce

Ms. Swift’s fans have been floating the notion that the many sports references in the track “The Alchemy” allude to the football player Travis Kelce , the singer’s current boyfriend. “So when I / Touch down, call the amateurs and cut ’em from the team / Ditch the clowns, get the crown, baby, I’m the one to beat," she sings in the chorus. “Where’s the trophy? / He just comes running over to me,” she adds in the bridge. But there is some debate, with some fans noting that her use of the term “blokes” would seem to imply the song is not about an American. (A winking line about “heroin but this time with an E” has some guessing the song is about Mr. Healy, who has previously spoken about his drug use.)

Ms. Swift and the actor Joe Alwyn broke up last year after a lengthy relationship. In the lead-up to the release of “Tortured Poets,” many fans believed this new album would process the end of that relationship. (Mr. Alwyn said in a 2022 interview that he was in a group text chat with the actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott called “ The Tortured Man Club .” Some fans believe Ms. Swift was nodding to this name with her latest album title.) There is some speculation that Track 5, “So Long, London,” is about Mr. Alwyn, who is British.

Jack Antonoff

A longtime collaborator of Ms. Swift’s, Jack Antonoff, who is credited as a producer on many of the new album’s songs, appears to get a lyrical shout out on the album’s title track.

The musician Lucy Dacus also appears on that same track. (In addition to her work as a solo artist, Ms. Dacus is a member of the supergroup boygenius, who surprised fans with a performance during a stop on Ms. Swift’s Eras tour last year.) “Sometimes, I wonder if you’re gonna screw this up with me / But you told Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave / And I had said that to Jack about you, so I felt seen,” Ms. Swift sings.

Kim Kardashian

Ms. Swift often leaves clues for fans by capitalizing seemingly random letters in words which, when strung together, spell a different word. In the case of this album, the song “thanK you aIMee,” seems to reveal the name Kim. (Ms. Swift and Kim Kardashian have a long and unfriendly history .)

In Greek mythology, Cassandra is given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, but is cursed such that no one will ever believe her. On a song with the same name as the goddess, Ms. Swift sings, “So they killed Cassandra first / ’Cause she feared the worst / And tried to tell the town / So they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say / Do you believe me now?” Snake emojis have also played a key role in the feud between Ms. Swift and Ms. Kardashian.

Charlie Puth

The singer-songwriter Charlie Puth gets a name drop on the title track: “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.” Mr. Puth, through a representative, declined to comment.

The song “Peter” appears to refer to the storybook character Peter Pan. “You said you were gonna grow up / Then said you were gonna come find me,” Ms. Swift sings. She has made similar allusions in the past, including a line about “Peter losing Wendy” on her song “cardigan” in 2020.

Patti Smith

The American singer, songwriter, poet and author Patti Smith gets a name check on the title track in a line about New York’s iconic Chelsea Hotel , where she once lived. Ms. Smith has been hailed as the “ punk poet laureate .”

Dylan Thomas

The Welsh poet, known for works like “Do not go gentle into that good night,” is also mentioned along with Ms. Smith. “You’re not Dylan Thomas / I’m not Patti Smith / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel / We’re modern idiots,” Ms. Swift sings. Thomas, who was also a resident at the Chelsea, is famous for his work as a neo-Romantic poet. (Ms. Swift has an older song, from her album “1989,” titled “New Romantics.”)

Clara Bow, an actress from the silent film era known as the first “it girl,” has an entire song dedicated to her on “Tortured Poets.” In 1927, Bow starred in a film titled “It” and became a national sex symbol before leaving the industry. Fans have pointed out that Ms. Swift’s thinly drawn eyebrows in a video teasing a new music video to accompany the song “Fortnight” bear a striking similarity to Ms. Bow’s.

Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks is named on the song “Clara Bow.” Ms. Nicks has said that Ms. Swift’s song “You’re on Your Own Kid” reminds her of Christine McVie, her Fleetwood Mac bandmate who died in 2022 . “You look like Stevie Nicks / In ’75, the hair and lips,” Ms. Swift sings in the song. (Ms. Nicks also wrote an original poem that accompanies a special vinyl edition of “Tortured Poets.”)

Madison Malone Kircher is a Times reporter covering internet culture. More about Madison Malone Kircher

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history  by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?  

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex  at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence  to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .

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Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poetry

By Amanda Petrusich

In the past several months, Taylor Swift has become culturally ubiquitous in a way that feels nearly terrifying. Superstardom tends to turn normal people into cartoons, projections, gods, monsters. Swift has been inching toward some sort of tipping point for a while. The most recent catalyst was, in part, love: in the midst of her record-breaking Eras Tour , Swift, who is thirty-four, began dating Travis Kelce , a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. Whenever Swift appeared at one of Kelce’s games, the broadcasters whipped their extra-high-definition cameras toward her, sending legions of amateur lip-readers scrambling for their phones. I’m paid to give legibility to such things, and even I couldn’t help but think that we were crossing some sort of Rubicon with regard to our collective sanity. Swift was everywhere, beheld by everyone. She is one of the most streamed artists of all time on Spotify; Billboard reported that, at one point, she accounted for seven per cent of all vinyl sales in the U.S. Swift is a capable and hugely savvy businesswoman (a billionaire, in fact), yet I began to worry about her in a nearly maternal way: How could anyone survive that sort of scrutiny and retain her humanity? Detaching from reality can be lethal for a pop star, particularly one known for her Everygirl candor. I thought of the oft-memed bit from “Arrested Development,” in which Lucille Bluth, the oblivious matriarch, asks, “I mean, it’s one banana, Michael—what could it cost? Ten dollars?”

This month, Swift released “The Tortured Poets Department,” her eleventh studio album. She has now reached a level of virtuosity within her genre that feels nearly immutable—she’s too practiced, too masterly, to swing and really miss. But “The Tortured Poets Department” suffers from being too long (two hours after it was released, Swift announced a second disk, bringing the total number of tracks to thirty-one) and too familiar. Swift co-wrote most of the record with Jack Antonoff and with Aaron Dessner. (The two producers have oppositional melodic sensibilities: Antonoff sharpens Swift; Dessner softens her.) The new songs suggest that, after a decade, her partnership with Antonoff has perhaps run its course. The tracks written with Dessner are gentler, more tender, and more surprising. The raw and stirring “Robin” seems to address a child—either a very young Swift (the album contains several references to her hijacked youth, including “The Manuscript,” a sombre song about a relationship with an older man), or maybe a future son or daughter.

“The Tortured Poets Department” was released following the end of Swift’s six-year relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn, and the album is mostly about the utter unreliability of love—how bonkers it is that we build our entire lives around a feeling that can simply dissipate. “You said I’m the love of your life / About a million times,” Swift sings on “Loml,” a wrenching piano ballad. “You shit-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles.” Shortly after Swift and Alwyn split, she reportedly had a fling with Matty Healy , the front man for the British rock band the 1975. (“I took the miracle move-on drug / The effects were temporary,” she sings on “Fortnight.”) Healy is a provocateur, prone to making loutish jokes; onstage, he smokes, eats raw steak, and makes out with strangers. The rumored relationship sent Swifties into spasms of outrage, and revealed the unusual extent to which Swift is beholden to her fans. She has encouraged and nurtured a parasocial affection (at times she nearly demanded it: inviting fans to her home, baking them cookies), and she now has to contend with their sense of ownership over her life. On “But Daddy I Love Him,” she scornfully chastises the “judgmental creeps” who relentlessly hounded her about her love life: “I’d rather burn my whole life down / Than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning.” (She saves the nastiest barb for the final verse: “All the wine moms are still holding out.”) Regardless, things with Healy ended fast, and, a few months later, she did the most wholesome thing possible: she started dating a football player whose team would go on to win the Super Bowl.

Quite a few of the album’s lyrics seem to evoke Healy: “You’re not Dylan Thomas / I’m not Patti Smith / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel / We’re modern idiots,” Swift sings on the title track, a shimmering song about broken people clinging to each other. I like that line—it suggests self-awareness—but it’s followed by one of the weirdest verses of Swift’s career: “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep / Like a tattooed golden retriever.” Other lyrics lack Swift’s signature precision: “At dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on,” she sings. Even the greatest poets whiff a phrase now and then, but a lot of the language on the record is either incoherent (“I was a functioning alcoholic till nobody noticed my new aesthetic”) or just generally bewildering (“Florida is one hell of a drug”). My favorite lyrics are the simplest, and are delivered with a kind of exhausted calm. On “Down Bad,” a woozy song about feeling like shit, Swift admits defeat: “Now I’m down bad, crying at the gym / Everything comes out teen-age petulance / Fuck it if I can’t have him.” Feel you, dude.

Each of Swift’s records has a distinct visual component—this is more or less the premise of the Eras Tour . “The Tortured Poets Department” is preoccupied with writerly accoutrements, but the vibe is ultimately more high-end stationery store than musty rare-books room. Initially, the title seemed as if it might be a smirking reference to Joe Alwyn (he once joked about being part of a WhatsApp group called the Tortured Man Club). But I find that the phrase works well as a summation of Swift’s entire self-conception. She has always made a big deal about her pain being generative. “This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on the page,” she wrote on Instagram. She has talked about this album as if the songs were mere monuments to her suffering: “Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.”

An unusual number of Swift’s songs portray love as combative, perhaps because she is so prone to working from a place of wounded longing. On “Better Than Revenge,” a song she wrote at eighteen, Swift sings about art as a useful weapon, a way to punish anyone who does her dirty: “She thinks I’m psycho / ’Cause I like to rhyme her name with things.” It’s a funny lyric, but, by Swift’s current age, most people understand that love isn’t about winning. (Art isn’t, either.) Yet, in Swift’s universe, love is often a battlefield. On “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” she catalogues the ways in which fame can pervert and destroy a person: “I was tame, I was gentle, till the circus life made me mean,” she sings. She is paranoid, wild-eyed: “Tell me everything is not about me / But what if it is ?” (After the year Swift has had, she’s not wrong to ask.) The song itself is so tightly produced that it doesn’t sound dangerous. But, midway through, her voice briefly goes feral. I found the moment thrilling, which is maybe part of the problem.

In the weeks before “The Tortured Poets Department” was released, it seemed as though a backlash was inevitable. Swift’s lyrics are often focussed on her perseverance against all odds, but, these days, she is too omnipresent and powerful to make a very convincing underdog. Still, interest in Swift has yet to diminish or fully sour. She announced the album at the Grammys, in February, as she was accepting the award for Best Pop Vocal Album, for her previous record, “Midnights.” I found her speech so profoundly mercenary it was sort of funny. “I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years, which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19th,” Swift said. “I’m gonna go and post the cover.”

As I’ve grown older, I’ve mostly stopped thinking about art and commerce as being fundamentally at odds. But there are times when the rapaciousness of our current pop stars seems grasping and ugly. I’m not saying that pop music needs to be ideologically pure—it wouldn’t be much fun if it were—but maybe it’s time to cool it a little with the commercials? A couple of days before the album’s release, Swift unveiled a library-esque display at the Grove, a shopping mall in Los Angeles. It included several pages of typewritten lyrics on faux aged paper, arranged as though they had recently been tugged from the platen of a Smith Corona. (The word “talisman” was misspelled on one, to the delight of the haters.) The Spotify logo was featured prominently at the bottom of each page. Once again, I laughed. What is the point of all that money if it doesn’t buy you freedom from corporate branding? For a million reasons—her adoption of the “poet” persona; her already unprecedented streaming numbers—such an egregious display of sponsorship was worse than just incongruous. It was, as they say, cringe.

Among the other clues Swift doled out were five exclusive playlists for Apple Music (sorry, Spotify!), comprising her own songs and organized according to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. At first, I thought the playlists were just another bit of overwrought marketing, but the more I listened to “The Tortured Poets Department” the more germane the concept felt. Anyone who has grieved knows that these categories are not a ladder you climb toward peace: it is possible, instead, to feel all of them at once, briefly or forever. Each stage is evident on “The Tortured Poets Department.” Sometimes they oppose one another: Swift is cocky and self-loathing, tough and vulnerable, totally fine and completely destroyed. She is free, but trapped. Dominant, powerless. She wants this, but she doesn’t. Those sorts of contradictions can be dizzying, but, in the end, they’re also the last things keeping her human. ♦

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Taylor Swift and Post Malone Burn Poems and Smash Windows in ‘Fortnight’ Music Video

By J. Kim Murphy

J. Kim Murphy

• Box Office: ‘Civil War’ Second Weekend Leading ‘Abigail’ and ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ in Tight Race 5 days ago
• Taylor Swift and Post Malone Burn Poems and Smash Windows in ‘Fortnight’ Music Video 6 days ago
• Box Office: ‘Civil War’ Ignites With $10.7 Million Opening Day 2 weeks ago

Taylor Swift welcomed fans to “ The Tortured Poets Department ” Friday evening, debuting a music video for “Fortnight,” her first single off of her new album.

The music video features the singer-songwriter and Post Malone , who features on the single, cast as ex-lovers who, per the lyrics, carried on an affair that only lasted 14 days. Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles, who starred in “Dead Poets Society,” also make surprise cameos as a pair of scientists carrying out tests on Swift, who overpowers the heavy machinery and sends it into electric crackling. Intertitles evocative of silent cinema bookend the music video.

When I was writing the Fortnight music video, I wanted to show you the worlds I saw in my head that served as the backdrop for making this music.  Pretty much everything in it is a metaphor or a reference to one corner of the album or another. For me, this video turned out to be… pic.twitter.com/TLaUg9jEoo — Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 20, 2024

“Fortnight” had been heavily teased as the first music video off of “The Tortured Poets Department,” though Swift only formally announced its debut shortly before the new album dropped Friday at midnight.

“The first single from The Tortured Poets Department is…………. Fortnight,” Swift told her fans on Instagram Thursday afternoon. “I’ve been such a huge fan of Post because of the writer he is, his musical experimentation and those melodies he creates that just stick in your head forever. I got to witness that magic come to life firsthand when we worked together.”

Swift first announced “The Tortured Poets Department” in her acceptance speech for best pop vocal album at the Grammy Awards — marking a swerve from what many fans expected would be a reveal of “Reputation,” one of the last two remaining albums in her “Taylor’s Version” re-recording project. Pre-order links promptly went up on Swift’s official website and socials.

Swift also surprised fans (and media members) by announcing that “The Tortured Poets Department” was a secret double album, releasing 15 extra songs in the early a.m. to make the event release that much more eventful. The artist also broke Spotify records on release day, with the album becoming the first-ever to reach 200 million streams within 24 hours.

Watch the “Fortnight” music video here.

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Arizona indicts Trump allies in 'fake elector' scheme; bird flu remnants found in milk

Suzanne Nuyen

Good morning. You're reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.

Today's top news

A grand jury in Arizona has indicted 18 of former President Donald Trump's closest advisors — including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The defendants are accused of being involved in a "fake elector" scheme that sought to keep Trump in office despite his loss in the 2020 election. The indictment alleges that after President Biden won the 2020 election, Trump's allies conspired to give Arizona's 11 electoral votes to Trump anyway.

Rudy Giuliani speaks during a news conference after his defamation trial Jose Luis Magana/AP hide caption

Rudy Giuliani speaks during a news conference after his defamation trial

• The 11 fake electors named in the indictment are a "who's who of Arizona Republicans from the Trump wing of the party," Wayne Schutsky of NPR network station KJZZ in Phoenix, Ariz., tells Up First . The average person might not be familiar with their names, but they're important people who " control the direction of party activities in the state, especially during elections."  

The FDA has found genetic material from the bird flu virus that infected dairy cows in tested samples of commercially available pasteurized milk. Federal officials say that the risk to the public remains low, as efforts to grow the virus from these samples indicated that the virus was inactive and no longer able to cause an infection. Further evaluation of the milk samples will be done. The FDA says those results will be released in the coming days or weeks. In the meantime, here's what consumers should know .

More than one-third of Americans routinely breathe in unhealthy air, according to the State of the Air report from the American Lung Association. This number is higher than in years past, despite long-term efforts to clean the nation's air. The passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 helped improve air quality significantly by reducing pollution from human-controlled sources like coal-powered plants and diesel trucks. Scientists say the challenge now will be to address climate change , as the biggest climate-fueled pollution challenge of today comes from wildfire smoke.

Today's listen

Nimer Saddy al-Nimer, 12, was shot five times by Israel's military on April 1 while gathering food from aid dropped by parachute that landed in Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza. Israeli soldiers took the boy into Israel for surgery, and, according to Nimer, placed him in a prison for four days while he recovered. He is now in a refugee camp in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Anas Baba for NPR hide caption

Nimer Saddy al-Nimer, 12, was shot five times by Israel's military on April 1 while gathering food from aid dropped by parachute that landed in Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza. Israeli soldiers took the boy into Israel for surgery, and, according to Nimer, placed him in a prison for four days while he recovered. He is now in a refugee camp in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

More than 25,000 children in Gaza have been killed or injured since October 2023, according to the United Nations. That's one child every ten minutes. From Tel Aviv, NPR's Rob Schmitz brings us the story of Nimer Saddy al-Nimer. The 12-year-old boy speaks with an NPR producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, about how he was shot by Israeli forces while trying to get food aid. He now lives in a refugee camp in Rafah.

• Listen to Nimer tell his story , or read it here . Editor's note: This story contains descriptions of violence.

Check out npr.org/mideastupdates for more coverage and analysis of the conflict.

Life Advice

For poetry lovers, the art form can help process anger, sadness or fear. It can also prompt joy and wonder. Others may not "get" poetry, and it can feel less accessible than other forms of writing. For National Poetry Month, try these tips from Life Kit for meaningfully connecting with a poem.

• Don't treat it like a school assignment.
• You don't have to unlock the author's meaning. Think about how the poem makes you feel. 
• Try reading the poem out loud and visualize it. You can doodle the images the poem evokes for you.
• Read more poetry! There are many different types of poems — find one that connects with you.

How has poetry affected your life? Is there a poem you love that brings you joy? Share your answers with NPR, and you may be featured in an upcoming edition of the Up First newsletter.

3 things to know before you go

Ed Dwight poses for a portrait in February to promote the National Geographic documentary film The Space Race during the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif. Chris Pizzello/Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP hide caption

Ed Dwight poses for a portrait in February to promote the National Geographic documentary film The Space Race during the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif.

• In the 1960s, Edward J. Dwight Jr. was poised to become America's first Black astronaut, but his dream was never realized. Now at age 90, he's finally making a trip into space. 
• Taylor Swift has broken her own record for the most vinyl albums sold in a week—and it only took her three days to do it. 
• Five military horses got loose in central London yesterday, galloping through rush hour crowds, smashing into vehicles and injuring several people before being captured.

This newsletter was edited by Majd Al-Waheidi .

Poetry Song Lyrics Assignment - Music Poetry Final Project Soundtrack Of My Life

Also included in

Description

Use this poetry song lyrics assignment to help your students see the connection between song lyrics and poetry. The Soundtrack Of My Life assignment allows students to make connections between their own lives and the lyrics of the songs they love and to analyze song lyrics as poetry. Even those students who find poetry challenging will be able to connect to this assignment.

This resource is included in the following bundles:

>>> Poetry Resource Bundle

>>> Musical Poetry Bundle

Included in this poetry song lyrics assignment:

➡️ A PowerPoint presentation that will introduce students to each element of the poetry song lyrics assignment. The presentation includes discussion questions, information about the two parts of the project, and rubric information to show what a strong response includes.

➡️ Detailed student instructions for completing both sections of the assignment.

• The first section has students make text-to-self connections between the lyrics of three songs and their own life (to design the soundtrack of their life).
• The second section has students examine one of the songs in more detail using poetry analysis techniques. They will summarize the poem, examine the theme, locate literary devices, and consider who might connect to these lyrics.

➡️ A brainstorming page with prompts that will help students choose the three songs they want to highlight on their soundtrack

➡️ Two good copy graphic organizers for both sections of the assignment where they will share their text-to-self connections and poetry song analysis

➡️ An easy-to-use teacher rubric that makes grading the poetry song lyrics assignment quick and easy

Poetry topics and skills addressed in this resource:

This resource allows students to use a variety of ELA and poetry-specific skills and standards. Below you will find a list of some of the skills this resource addresses:

• Text-to-Self Connections
• Brainstorming
• Summarizing and paraphrasing
• Locating and analyzing literary devices (metaphor, simile, imagery, personification, hyperbole, oxymoron, allusion, alliteration, etc.) Examining poetic form (stanzas, meter, rhyme scheme, etc.)
• Interpreting poetic theme
• Considering audience and purpose

What teachers are saying about using the poetry song lyrics assignment:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I used this resource as an 8th grade ELAR project at the end of our poetry review. My students were engaged and extremely insightful in their analyzations. Perfect way to connect the real world with poetry and get my 8th graders to think a bit deeper about their preferences in music.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I am using this activity as a way to prepare my students for their final. I wanted to make an EOY final that was fun as well as rigorous and standards aligned . This was the perfect activity for them to practice with. My students are enjoying this so much !!!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ My students enjoyed using this resource. They were excited about this activity and engaged the entire time .

Looking for the digital version? Click here .

Pair this poetry writing booklet with our poetry annotation guide:

→ How to Annotate Poetry Student Guide

© Presto Plans

➡️ Want 10 free ELA resources sent to your inbox? Click here!

⭐️ Follow Presto Plans on TpT to see what's new and on sale .

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