You look like...
Poetic Repetition in "The Tortured Poets Department" - New episode out now!
We’re throwing it back to Episode 27: Poetic Repetition, but this time we’re doing it Summer School style and looking at poetic repetition in “The Tortured Poets Department.” We cover AP English favorites like anaphora, epimone, alliteration, and assonance. And, we explore how poetic repetition can emphasize something important, create feelings of dwelling, evoke religious or holy imagery, or taunt someone.
🎥 Sneak Peek
Catch excerpts from the podcast and behind-the-scenes content on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram!
🛍️ Shop With Us! Active Discount Codes
As we grow, we are so excited to announce new partnerships! Here you’ll find active discount codes available to our listeners.
📚 Bookshop.org Check out all our book recommendations by episode
🔉Libro.fm Support your local bookstore while listening to great audiobooks
Code: APTS
Offer: Get a free audiobook when you start a new membership (you must use this link!)
Receive 2 audiobook credits for $14.99 USD with your first month of membership.Code: APTS30
Offer: 30% off specific audiobooks in the AP Taylor Swift playlist.
✨ Krowned Krystals Make the whole place shimmer with the best rhinestones
Code: APTS
Offer: 10% off your order when you use the link above
This Week’s Extra Credit - Brought to You by Maansi
This week on AP Taylor Swift, we discuss poetic repetition. During this discussion and the original one we had in Episode 27 (and just throughout the podcast in general), we throw out some terminology: alliteration, anaphora, and connotation. You may be wondering - where do all these terms come from? Where can one find these terms to better understand and keep up with our discussions? Well, wonder no more. Today, I’m going to shed some light on the Rice Rhetorical Strategies we use in many of our discussions.
If you’re a nerd like me, you may have been exposed to the Rice Rhetorical Strategies in your AP Language Arts class (shoutout to Ms. Upton). These are devices one uses to wield rhetoric. What is rhetoric you may be wondering? Technically defined, rhetoric is “the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques” (Oxford Dictionary). Because these rhetorical devices are intended for persuasive writing, sometimes they can mean slightly different things in a poetic context, but many of the devices are the same and can just be combined in different ways depending on the kind of work you’re writing.
Confused? Think of the terminology we use on the show as ingredients. When ingredients are combined in a particular way, you get an appetizer or a side dish (i.e. rhetoric). If you combine the same ingredients in another way, you may get dessert (poetry). Knowing ingredients is helpful because it can help you in your mission to convey certain flavors. To bring it back to language, knowing these devices is helpful because it can help you in your mission to convey certain emotions in your writing.
Taylor Swift is a master of wielding language. In listening to our podcast, you know that often the three of us come up with different interpretations of what a song is about. But one of the things I love about our deep dives is, when we start to really go through a song lyric by lyric, we start to understand why we feel that way. What are the words and devices that trigger these emotions in us? Most of the time, even though we relate to the songs differently and have different associations, a lot of the underlying emotions are often similar.
The Tortured Poets Department is an album that has taken all of us on a very complicated journey. A general consensus is that the more we listened to it, the more we loved it. This is because with multiple listens comes more attention to the words that are being used, and therefore more opportunities for the devices and techniques used to have their effect.
There are 77 Rice Rhetorical Strategies that we learn in school, and I guarantee that if we really tried (homework, dear reader?), we could probably find almost all of them in The Tortured Poet’s Department. I am going to attempt to illustrate just a few examples.
Abstract - Abstract is the opposite of concrete. One could argue that in dealing with emotions, the topics of all of Taylor’s songs are abstract, but some examples of abstract ideas in the song “Fortnight are: “Nobody noticed my new aesthetic” or “All my mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February.”
Allegory - The allegory of “The Bolter” or “Cassandra” (a narrative in which character, action, and sometimes setting represent abstract concepts apart from the literal meaning of a story.)
Alliteration - probably exists in the bridge of every song, like in the bridge of “But Daddy I Love Him” (“sanctimoniously…soliloquies”, “counteract the chemistry,” “unDo the destiny”). We also have some alliteration in “Florida!!!” where she says “down in Destin.” This is one of the main ways Taylor plays with rhythm to add emphasis.
Allusion - “I kept calm and carried the weight” in “So Long London” is an allusion to the popular phrase “Keep Calm and Carry On.” She also alludes to the seer Cassandra from Greek Mythology in the song of the same name. There are allusions to Peter Pan in “Peter,”
Analogy - “You know how to ball, I know Aristotle.” In more explicit terms, the analogy is real-life adults to their high school caricatures.
Anaphora - In this week’s episode we talk about anaphora at the beginning of “The Tortured Poet’s Department” (“and who’s gonna”) as well as in “Florida!!!”
These are just some of the As. When we skip around the list of strategies, we also find:
Rhetorical questions - This one is so common, that we will have a whole episode dedicated to it in the Fall! “The Tortured Poets Department” is full of them (“And who’s gonna hold you like me?” “Who else decodes you?”) We also see some in “The smallest man who ever lived” (“Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?”)
Polysyndeton - The repetition of conjunctions like in “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus.”
Tone - “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” is upbeat and jovial, even though it’s about a dark and depressing topic.
So now that you know a bit about the lens we take when doing these deep dives, read up on the rhetorical strategies, and let us know if you hear any fun ones as you listen to your favorite Tay tunes on repeat!