Taylor Swift (For)Evermore: 113 Poets Pay Tribute #2

Michael Giltz
·5-min read

Taylor Swift forevermore! It’s the year of Taylor Swift (obviously) and more than one hundred poets pay tribute in a new book. She’s enjoying the top-grossing concert tour of all time, the top-grossing concert film of all time and topping it off with another Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. (Swift already has four, more than anyone else in history.)

You won’t be surprised to hear Taylor Swift’s impact can even be felt in the world of poetry. (Not for nothing is her new album called The Tortured Poets Department.) A new book proves it.

Taylor Swift (For)Evermore: 113 Poets Pay Tribute #2: Love Affair

<p>Courtesy of Ballantine Books</p>

Courtesy of Ballantine Books

Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Music of Taylor Swift edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty ($26; Ballantine Books; out December 3) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Here’s how it happened. Writer Kristie Frederick Daugherty had an idea: give poets their own, personal, “secret” Taylor Swift song to be inspired by and help spark ideas. Gather the contributions together. Share them with the world.

The response was overwhelming: artist after artist said yes, including Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Critics Circle Award winners, best-selling poets and the 23rd US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (the first Native American to be honored with that role).

I'm offering one new poem a week for the next three weeks from this collection, an exclusive first look! You’ll find a poem inspired by Swift, followed by the poet’s thoughts on Swift, how the poem came to be, whatever they want. What the poet won’t tell us is which Swift poem they were assigned as their personal touchstone for the project. Your guess is as good as mine! We’ll feature four poems in all, concluding with editor Daugherty’s touching and penetrating thoughts on her journey with this project.

Today? Prepare for the beginning of a lifelong love affair.

Excerpted from INVISIBLE STRINGS by Kristie Frederick Daugherty. “Midnight Ruby” by Ellen Bass, copyright © 2024 by Ellen Bass. Used by permission of Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. 

“Midnight Ruby”
By Ellen Bass

Happiness writes in white ink on a white page, someone once said, so perhaps

not even you will be able to read this. But I don’t care. I’m remembering for the

pleasure of remembering when you lived in a tent in a rhododendron forest.

A hundred thousand blossoms with names like Scintillation, Boule de Neige,

Midnight Ruby, Honey Butter. You propped a propane stove on a milk crate, set

a tiny table by the pallet on the floor. You ran extension cords from a pole in the

parking lot so we had light. It was chilly, early spring. Not another soul for

miles. We were so new that when you knelt behind me and kissed my neck as I

was stirring a soup I was stunned. And there was a shower that took quarters

and we divined how to slide a knife into the works so the silver rained back into

our palms and we could stand in an endless extravagance of hot hot water,

washing each other’s hair, the slick curves of our bodies, tight with youth and

desire. Only the owls heard our cries. Now we’re old. I have to hold the railing

to get up the stairs. But there’s a bruise at the edge of my lip. Your teeth.

Last night.

On The Rhododendron Forest from Ellen Bass

I’ve been trying to write about the beginning of the love affair with my wife for as long as we’ve been together—­ forty-­ three years—­ and the poems always failed. But as I listened to “my” Taylor Swift song over and over, I began to be able to touch back to the thrill and exuberance of young love.

Still, the poem didn’t come easy. I had to meander over many pages. I wrote about strewing rose petals in her bath. I wrote about how I’d thought we were setting off for a life I could envision, how I never imagined it would be more like the uncharted seas of medieval maps where cartographers wrote here be dragons. I wrote about a yellow plastic horse that still stands in our yard, having been ridden by our children and now grandchildren. And by then I knew I had to pull myself together and focus! I went back to the very beginning and writing this poem became a joy.

Taylor Swift made what had been impossible possible. We weren’t picture-­takers in those days, so there’s no photo of that rhododendron forest. Now there is. 

Excerpted from INVISIBLE STRINGS by Kristie Frederick Daugherty. “Midnight Ruby” by Ellen Bass, copyright © 2024 by Ellen Bass. Used by permission of Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. 

Ellen Bass’s most recent collection, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Her other poetry books include Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Her poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The NEA, and The California Arts Council, The Lambda Literary Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and her nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, California jails, and teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University.

<p>Courtesy of Ballantine Books, William Morrow Paperbacks, Copper Canyon Press</p>

Courtesy of Ballantine Books, William Morrow Paperbacks, Copper Canyon Press

Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Music of Taylor Swift edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty ($26; Ballantine Books; out December 3) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Courage To Heal: 20th Anniversary Edition by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis ($25.99; William Morrow Paperbacks) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org 

Indigo by Ellen Bass ($18; Copper Canyon Press) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

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