TRANSCRIPT

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

Recently I was part of a virtual event with over fifty poets, all contributors to the anthology Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift. The book’s concept was hatched by Swiftie Kristie Daugherty, in celebration of Taylor’s album The Tortured Poets Department. 

The audience peaked close to 250 people and lasted 2 1/2 hours. I envisioned us together in Prairie Lights Books in Iowa, New York’s Tishman Auditorium or Seattle Arts and Lectures, all small venues compared to the arenas Taylor Swift has been selling out across the globe. Once I read my piece, I watched from my kitchen and ate chili. 

Contributing poets read in the order of their place in the table of contents. A number of folks claimed not to have been Swifties, but the invitation to submit was too enticing. Many of our family members are; they would not have forgiven us if we turned down the offer. Swifties are apparently detectives, and apparently there are millions, so we were encouraged to embed clues to the songs to which we responded. 

Invisible Strings follows a trend; All Shook Up: Collected Poems about Elvis, Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology, and more. Then of course, there are all the single-authored collections inspired by musicians from Sarah Blake’s Mr. West to Michael Harper’s Dear John, Dear Coltrane. 

I celebrate these collections for the simple fact that they potentially serve as a gateway to poetry. If anyone can get a new generation to read poetry it is Taylor Swift – much like the many who suddenly began watching American football because of Taylor Swift. 

These anthologies make poetry less pompous, less pretentious, less formal in subject matter. We are reminded of poetry’s folk origins as an art for the masses. The poems in the Swift anthology also help to divine her place among the constellation of iconic singers and musicians. This is their power. 

Today’s poem follows another trend in poetry: the popularity of the self-portrait. Reading it as the rap battle of the summer, arguably of the century, played out between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, I understood again the relationship between hip-hop and poetry. Wit and insinuation are vital elements of our culture.

Self-Portrait as Kendrick Lamar, Laughing to the Bank
by Ashanti Anderson

This, what God feels like: laughing
alone in an empty room of tiny doors,
behind every door a metal box, inside each
a man’s red heart, lying. I don’t write
of the cartoonish thing split and jagged 
at its insides. Instead, of how I break 
even across the same backs spindled by hate. 
I tell God I understand and what I mean is
I’ve noticed good people must die to let 
there be light in my house. We share a likeness,
God and I, both laughing like something
green folded in our throats. Laughing mean-
while somebody’s auntie asks for Anything
Helps. Laughing when people say they don’t
want to read about the bad stuff. Crying
laughing as we pass our pain off as an offering
plate. Sometimes I nervous chuckle, knowing
trauma pays, but the only time I really laugh
is when I’m laughing to the bank like a-ha.

"Self-Portrait as Kendrick Lamar, Laughing to the Bank" by Ashanti Anderson. Used by permission of the poet.