Today’s poem is part of a special launch schedule during National Poetry Month from April 1—30, 2024. I’ll be posting a new poem daily for 30 days, which will be sent out to all subscribers as a summary on April 30 and otherwise can be viewed for free in the archives here. Thank you for being here!
“TAYLOR SWIFT IS ACTUALLY KIND OF IMPORTANT”
I have to laugh and pity the person who goes on record to say this woman is not important when you have girls screaming jumping crying so loud it measures on the Richter scale, no, they measure on the Richter scale, because they have never stacked up to much of anything other than marriage material to be traded like cows and shepherded like sheep, or the alternative: crazy, destitute cat lady. When every thing that woman does is at the service of making people who have never felt important feel important. And she doesn't just say it, say it like all the tech companies and call centre hold recordings: Your call is important to us. No, she uses her life and turns it into art to make us feel like art and friends and pure magic. I wasn’t even there and when I saw her in the theatre layers of movie magic and artifice between us, I still felt the ground move beneath me, three decades of unimportance and more I'm sure skewered for a moment by the nightmare of womanhood finally dressed as a daydream.
P.S.
I wrote this poem after a certain someone said that Taylor Swift is “not important” in the lead-up to The Tortured Poets Department dropping this week. The skeptic in me almost thinks it’s part of the entire PR game but if not, these are my feelings about it.