Taylor Swift, really?
I just wrote that to get in on the glory of a transcontinental mega-star. Actually, I am a little starstruck myself because just by announcing the title of her next album that doesn’t exist yet, there were two articles in the New York Times about poetry. The last time that happened was probably when Robert Frost died, and one of them would have been his obituary. Will Tay Tay do for my favored genre of writing what she has done for the NFL?
Catching fame in pre-digital human existence was a slog. Think of Jesus. He had a few Galilean fisherman, outcast women, and tax collectors following him around when he was alive. Then, after his death, it took wandering charismatics hundreds of years to catch fire and become as popular as Taylor.
Poor Emily Dickinson could hardly get a verse published. It wasn’t until after her........