Dear Reader: A Guest Post by Kristie Frederick Daugherty

Have you ever wondered how our greatest poets would respond to the works of Taylor Swift? Now we have an answer — Invisible Strings is a glittering anthology of easter-egg-filled poems from 113 lauded poets responding to Taylor Swift songs. Read on for Kristie’s exclusive guest post on the creation of and inspiration for this anthology.

Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift was conceived in a flash. During the 2024 Grammy Awards ceremony held in February, Taylor Swift announced her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, and a question popped into my mind: how might poets and poetry grab this moment and enter into conversation with Swift’s incredible discography?

As quickly as the question formed, so did an answer: I envisioned a poetry anthology in which poets respond to a song of Swift’s without using the song’s title or any direct lyrics, creating a one-of-a-kind ekphrastic anthology as well as a chance for Swifties to do what Swift has taught them to do: closely read her lyrics to search for allusions. In Swiftian language, these allusions are called “Easter eggs.” 

In the anthology’s introduction, I explain how I moved Invisible Strings from conception to this finished work of art. I hope that many of you will read it and let the words from 113 of the best poets writing today move you to joy and tears, in the same way a Taylor Swift song does. Putting Invisible Strings together has been pure magic, from the caliber of poets who came on board—Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, New York Times bestselling poets, Instapoets—to the extreme honor of being the first to read brand-new work from these esteemed poets, to ordering the poems in the anthology while keeping the poems in one part of my mind and the song of Swift’s which they respond to in another.

I had to hold these two concepts together but not allow the songs to “take over” the poems, and the songs, being inherently louder than the poems, caused me several false starts, as I realized that I was ordering the book in “album order”—I am a debut-era, diehard Swiftie, after all, so I know her albums and the tracklists intimately. After a few times starting over (as I would realize that I had placed too many Lover poems together, or folklore poems together, or The Tortured Poets Department poems together) I found two poems that gave me instruction: Maggie Smith’s poem “Pull” as the first, and Jane Hirshfield’s poem “And now from the distance of time” as the last. Sister songs from sister albums (yes, that is an Easter egg, Swifties).

While there is no index in the book of song/poem pairings, readers can find that list online, on my Instagram page, kristie.daugherty.1, and my webpage, kristiefrederickdaugherty.com. Additionally, this list will be available on the book’s discussion guide, also available online. Because the poetry anthology is first and foremost its own work of art, I chose not to include an index in the book, just as Swift does not include liner notes explaining all the Easter eggs, symbols, and metaphors in her songs.

As Swift concludes on the last song of The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology in the song “The Manuscript”: “Now and then I reread the manuscript/But the story isn’t mine anymore.” Swift, like all great writers, understands that she need not follow her songs around explaining them; once released into the world, they belong to the listener/reader. The same is true of the brilliant, joyous, heart-wrenching, true poems in Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift. No matter if you read the poems through the lens of the corresponding Swift song or if you read the poems without knowing the song behind them, the twist—and the truth—is this: you can read them either way, dear reader, and what you see in them will not change all that much, because what you read into each poem is the story of you.

In Swift’s song “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” she sings, “Put narcotics into all of my songs/That’s why you’re still singing along.” What Swift, ever the mastermind, has placed into her songs that continue to move hundreds of millions of fans across the world is not narcotics. 

It’s the language of the story of you. 

And you. 

And you. 

Swift is indeed the mirrorball she claims to be in her album folklore. 113 poets mirror Swift’s lyrics here. Go find yourself in their words in this anthology, just as Dr. Taylor Alison Swift has taught you to do.