Tortured Post-/Modernism(s)?

When discussing Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, an reviewer on New York Times was critical of Swift. In the concluding paragraph, the editor recalls Sylvia Plath, writing that

“Sylvia Plath once called poetry “a tyrannical discipline,” because the poet must “go so far and so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit.”

Similarly, Christianity Today’s review of Swift’s album was equally critical, drawing on similar reflections that Swift could use an editor.

Actually, this is what I find problematic about the literature of writing. Everyone is concerned about aesthetics, and it may be to the extent that we minimise the peripheral details that matter so much to the writer. We say, it ought to be omitted; yet the writer wants it admitted. Some story stems and details may be peripheral to the reader, but they may not be periperhal to the writer.

Perhaps, we have different senses of the art. But I, at least, appreciate Swift’s boldness and autonomy to be free in her writing, even if her songs may not appeal to literary experts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/arts/music/taylor-swift-album-tortured-poets-department-review.html

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2024/april-web-only/taylor-swift-whatever-she-wants-tortured-poets-department.html