Taylor Swift: They are the poets who inspired the songs of the album ‘The tortured poet department’ | News from Mexico

Taylor Swift is inspired by romantic poets and countercultural figures to create his most literary album, The tortured poet department.

LOS ANGELES.- With The tortured poets departmentlaunched in April 2024, Taylor Swift He brought his narrative style to a new level and placed Literature in the center of the pop stage.
The singer takes up the Figure of the “tortured poet” to dialogue with authors of romanticism and with icons of the counterculture of the twentieth century. Thus, his songs in this album function as a Bridge between Wordsworth and New York of Patti Smith.

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The romanticism that is heard in The tortured poets department
In the romantic era The artist had to feel “too much” and channel it in verses. Swift lifts that flag: talks about emotional overflows, Searches for sublime and loves that hurt.
Allusions range from Brumous landscapes—William Wordsworth registered.even almost epistolary confessions They remember John Keats.

“You are not Dylan Thomas …”
On the subject that gives the album, The singer triggers one of the most commented lines:
I laughed on your face and told you: ‘You are not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith’ “
With that phrase claims two important names of the twentieth century:
- Dylan Thomas: Welsh poet that converted nostalgia and alcohol into confessional art.
- Patti Smith: “The godmother of punk”, who mixed Beat poetry and rock on albums like horses.
Swift is presented at the same time as heiress and as your own voice; Recognize the lineage without copying it.
Who were Wordsworth, Keats and Coleridge?
To understand the clues that the artist leaves throughout the album, it is convenient to review three referents of the first generation Romantic:
- William Wordsworth (1770-1850): He sang the beauty of everyday life and the strength of nature.
- John Keats (1795-1821): He signed Odas on the transience of life and the obsession with the eternal.
- Samuel Taylor Colleridge (1772-1834): He explored the supernatural in poems as “the ballad of the old sailor.”
Swift takes each other’s metaphors: rivers that cure memories, Letters never sent and seas that symbolize the inner chaos.
From dark romanticism to the Gothic that quotes Poe
Not everything is light in the album. Some songs are dyed with shadows and remember the “Dark romanticism”current that flourished in Germany and the United States. His features – Drinkle, attraction for the supernatural and criticism of enlightened optimism – they agree with:
- Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849): Macabro story teacher who inspired the so -called Schwarze Romantik.
- Germanic writers that populated the literature of ghosts and castles in ruins.
Swift collects those atmospheres to narrate obsessions, betrayals and the thin line that separates Passion and destruction.


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Why is the album called The tortured poet department?
The title works as Wink to an “Imaginary Office” where muses are made of cold anxiety and coffee. He tormented poet archetype It was consolidated at the end of the 18th century, when the romantics reacted against the rationalism of the Enlightenment.
In the 21st century, Swift modernizes that figure: talks about social networks, endless tours and media ruptures, but the essence—Turn pain into beauty“Permanent.”