6A —Monday, November 27, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

BIG MACHINE

What happened, Tay??
Who is to blame for Swift’s 
latest album ‘reputation’? 

The new album is a digression from the Taylor we knew & loved

When 
I 
turned 
16, 
my 

friend gave me a copy of 
Taylor Swift’s then newest 
album, 
Red, 
to 
accompany 

me in my newfound freedom 
behind the wheel. Much of 
the 
record 
soundtracked 

my late night drives spent 
fabricating scenarios where 
her own experiences were 
also applicable to my life. 
The album opens with the 

stunning “State of Grace,” 
where 
Taylor 
chronicles 

the highs and lows of love 
amid a bouncing drum beat 
and guitar-driven melodies. 
My first “heartbreak” was 
partially mended with the help 
of “We Are Never Ever Getting 

DOMINIC POLSINELLI

Daily Arts Writer

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

DAILY LITERATURE COLUMN

The indomitable power 

of Anna Akhmatova

Early last year, I was on a 

quest to find poets I thought 
were like Bob Dylan. I didn’t 
want replicas of him, but I was 
inspired by the instantaneous 
ways he could access symbolism, 
and the way in which he could 
pack so much meaning into the 
span of only a few lyrics. I knew 
these were literary qualities, 
and I wanted to find a style of 
poetry that excited me as much 
as the style of his songwriting.

Naturally, 
I 
went 
first 

to 
Dylan’s 
own 
admitted 

influences: 
Dylan 
Thomas, 

Arthur Rimbaud, even Paul 
Verlaine to a certain extent. I 
definitely saw where Dylan had 
gotten a lot of what he used: 
the innovative amalgamations 
of 
language, 
the 
empathic 

attention to specific moments. 
But Thomas’s work didn’t make 
a whole lot of sense to me at 
the time, and for some reason, 
Rimbaud’s didn’t really do it for 
me, either.

I soon drifted out of the 

phase, and over the course of 
the past year, I’ve coincidentally 
run into a few poets who have 
done the trick for me — W.H. 
Auden would probably be the 
strongest example.

But recently, I found someone 

who completely hits the nail on 
the head: Anna Akhmatova.

By “hits the nail on the head,” 

let me clarify that I don’t mean 
she sounds like Bob Dylan. 
No poet should be lauded for 
convincingly 
sounding 
like 

another 
one. 
(Anyway, 
she 

came first, so it might be more 
accurate to say he sounds like 
her.) Instead, I mean that she 
captures 
moments 
with 
an 

uncanny completion; she pays 
enormous attention to detail, yet 
is careful not to let that detail 
overpower her own voice. In 
short, she is one of those poets 
whose work makes you know 
that you’ve felt it.

Akhmatova 
was 
born 
in 

1889 and spent her life in 
Russia. Much of her life was 
affected by the turbulence of 
Russian politics at the time; 
her expansive poem “Requiem” 
deals with the subject of the 
Stalinist terror, which saw the 
arrest of her son and the arrest 
and execution of her husband, 
Nikolay Gumilyov. Many of her 

friends were also killed, and at 
one point her poetry was barred 
from publication.

As someone who lived through 

two world wars and a great deal 
of 
domestic 
conflict 
within 

Russia, her work is contoured 
with politics: She describes the 
torment of wishing for her son’s 
freedom and the conflict of not 
knowing whether or not to leave 
the country, but she was also 
patriotic. She regularly read 
her work to soldiers in hospitals 
and on the front lines, even 
while the forces of the political 
climate closed in on her from all 

sides. During a period of time 
in which Stalin was constantly 
monitoring her, she, along with 
other Russian writers of the 
time period, would pass along 
poems orally, or by writing them 
down, reading them aloud and 
then immediately burning them.

One story that struck me in 

particular happened in the early 
1930s. Akhmatova’s son was 
imprisoned at the time, and she 
would go regularly to deliver 
food for him. One day, a woman 
recognized her outside a stone 
prison and asked in a whisper, 
“Can you describe this?” When 
Akhmatova replied, “I can,” she 
would later describe “something 
like a smile (passing) fleetingly 
over what had once been (the 
woman’s) face.”

These 
stories 
about 

Akhmatova’s life and approach 
to 
writing 
represent 
what 

is often the most powerful 
about literature as a whole. 
Akhmatova’s 
profession 
was 

that of a writer, and yet even that 
was power enough to change the 
lives of those around her — the 
woman, whose lips Akhmatova 
described as “blue from cold,” 
knew 
Akhmatova 
may 
not 

have been able to help her in a 
tangible sense. But by describing 
what she saw at the prison, 
she altered that story, and she 
gave that woman a voice. She 
was committed enough to her 
writing to memorize and burn 
her own work to prevent her 
ideas from being compromised, 
and committed enough to her 
country to stay and try to help 
her fellow citizens even while 
she herself was on the verge of 
being arrested.

This tension and patriotic 

conflict 
can 
be 
seen 
in 

Akhmatova’s work, along with 
her 
personal 
stubbornness 

and authoritative will. In both 
her personal relationships and 
her poetry, Akhmatova was 
constantly asserting her own 
agency. However, her poems 
also highlight beauty, intimacy 
and nature in ways that are 
touchingly genuine. Her poem 
“Snow,” for instance, is no less 
vivid or gentle than Robert 
Frost’s famous “Stopping by 
Woods on a Snowy Evening.” 
“Lot’s Wife” recounts a familiar 
legend with a voice of pure 
empathy; “Willow” is honest 
and mournful.

A good poem, in many ways, 

LAURA 
DZUBAY

has the same goal as a good song. 
It will come at you honestly. It 
will be vivid and well-spoken. 
Maybe it will tell you the story 
of a specific person or a place, in 
the hope that you will come to 
understand that person or place 
better than you had before. 
It will show you something 
emotional, and you will be 

glad to have seen it — what’s 
more, maybe now you will have 
something to show to somebody 
else.

Every 
writer 
does 
this 

differently. Anna Akhmatova 
did 
it 
with 
a 
power 
and 

determination that would be 
amazing to find anywhere, 
but are especially amazing 

given the context of her life. 
No change ever really stops 
happening, and many of the 
works that Akhmatova was 
known for throughout her life 
are still useful to us today if we 
wish to understand not only her 
and her surroundings, but also 
the importance of literary work 
to humanity in general.

Back Together.” Red represents 
all of Swift’s best qualities, 
an icon perfectly balancing 
the line between pop queen 
and charming indie singer-
songwriter; 
it’s 
an 
honest 

record filled with grounded 
human 
emotions 
— 
honest 

enough to reach through to an 
angsty, punk-fueled 16-year-
old. Swift followed up Red 
with 2014’s 1989, where she 
finally took a bigger leap into 
the realm of pop music without 
really losing the emotional 
attainability of her previous 
work, albeit being slightly less 
memorable than Red.

So what the hell happened 

with reputation?

On her latest record, “the new 

Taylor” is a canvas for her worst 
facets, seemingly exacerbated 
by the media. The new Taylor 
is unlovable, but she’s also 
promiscuous. The new Taylor is 
bad, but she can’t be blamed for 
it. reputation is quite frankly 
a jarring album, which could 
have been easily predicted from 
the first single. In 2017, Swift 
presents herself as messy and 
scattered, expertly explained 
by fellow Daily writer Danny 
Madion in his review. She damn 
near did the impossible and 
made her music hard to like on 
reputation.

Don’t 
get 
me 
wrong, 

reputation 
isn’t 
entirely 

insufferable. “Dancing With 
Our Hands Tied,” minus the 
cringe-worthy, EDM drenched 
chorus, is a pretty decent work 
of modern pop. Swift shows 
her sexual side on “Dress” in 
a more emotional way devoid 
of the inflammatory finger-
pointing seen on “Delicate” 
and “Gorgeous.” But for all its 
merited moments, reputation 
shows a side of Swift that 
serves to sever the personal 

connection many listeners had 
with her and her narratives. 
With a full move to bombastic 
pop, Swift’s musical focus shifts 
from her reflections on love 
and life to examine her portrait 
in the public eye, producing 
dismal, 
almost 
nauseating 

results.

Most troubling is trying to 

determine just how much of 
this is actually Swift’s fault. 
For almost a decade, she has 
been 
plagued 
by 
negative 

media coverage. It has hovered 

over 
and 
dissected 
her 

character ruthlessly, ripping 
her interpersonal interactions 
with other celebrities (both 
good and bad) to shreds. Can 
we reasonably expect Swift to 
ignore it all? Did we really think 
she’d write another sappy love 
record steeped with the deeply 
personal narratives the media 
so greedily analyzed? Swift 
showed a critical and clever 
self-awareness of her current 
image on “Look What You 
Made Me Do,” but beyond this, 
her lyricism on reputation holds 
little weight in its attempt at 

justification for her treatment 
by the media.

As non-celebrities, it can 

be hard for us to put ourselves 
into 
the 
shoes 
of 
massive 

stars. In Swift’s case, it can 
be 
even 
harder 
when 
the 

media 
continuously 
paints 

her 
innocent 
country 
girl 

aesthetic as a veil for a more 
insidious, heartless pop star. 
One can only assume another 
narrative-driven love record 
would be turned inside-out by 
the media, further pinning her 
under the weight of her self-
crafted persona. It’s really no 
surprise that Swift wants to be 
excluded from her own public 
narrative. reputation puts Swift 
at her most self-conscious, and 
in writing the album, as poor as 
it is, Swift excels at emptying 
the fuel the media has used 
for years to keep her on the 
front burner. What she has left 
them are lyrics accepting or 
confronting every slanderous 
headline that has already been 
written about her.

In 
hindsight, 
reputation 

was a very natural response 
to the way Swift’s image has 
been morphed and mutilated 
by the public eye. Swift had 
been backed into a corner, left 
with little else to write about. 
I don’t blame her for becoming 
defensive. I don’t blame her 
for trying to remove herself 
from the narrative. I don’t 
blame her for writing her most 
aggressive pop album yet even 
if it’s at the cost of listenability 
and likability. For now, I’ll 
continue to love the old Taylor, 
to sing along to “Red” and 
“Better Than Revenge,” and 
to hope that Swift will rise 
from the ashes of reputation 
like 
a 
pissed-off 
phoenix 

with vengeful pop of a higher 
caliber.

In hindsight, 
reputation was 
a very natural 
response to the 

way Swift’s image 
has been morphed 
and mutilated by 

the public eye

