WORCESTER – A new English course at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts takes a look at lyrics from Taylor Swift and other artists and compares them with poetry that’s hundreds of years old.
Making students appreciate poetry
“One of the questions that was in the course description was why do so many people say that they dislike poetry but enjoy music so much,” said student Caroline Kramer. “And I sort of looked at myself and I was like, I feel like I might be one of those people.”
That’s what drew students to the inaugural Tortured Poets Department course at Holy Cross. The English course shares a title with Swift’s latest release.
“A lot of times my students will say, I don’t get poetry,” said Holy Cross professor Julie Camarda.
“Poetry’s always kind of been, actually, one of my least favorite mediums of writing,” said Kramer.
Comparing pop stars to poets
To make poetry more approachable, Camarda turned to some of the best lyrical artists of the 20th Century, showing students that modern pop stars have a lot in common with the classic Romantic poets.
The class doesn’t just feature prose from Swift.
“So you can have a poem by Wordsworth called like ‘Tintern Abbey’ on memory, alongside Peter Gabriel, ‘Solsbury Hill’ or Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now,'” said Camarda. “But there were all kinds of topics that I had to leave out. And that’s where the students were contributing themselves.”
By the end of the semester, students were tasked with a project, a multimedia presentation of texts and songs they’d recommend adding to the syllabus.
“It’s a matter of taste, as we discussed in the class,” said Camarda. “It became a bit of a class joke that I was not a Swiftie and that about two-thirds of the class were. I am always grateful to Taylor Swift for titling her most recent album The Tortured Poets Department because it proved a great opportunity to talk about all of those issues.”
Camarda isn’t offering the class for the spring semester but is hoping to bring it back in the future.
