Taylor Swift and the pop poets: Which stars have written poems?

Her song lyrics are used as a study subject at universities, and she also has an honorary doctorate in art sciences. Taylor Swift likes to be inspired by Shakespeare for her lyrics, and the name of her new album “Tortured Poets Department”, which is released on Friday, could also be the title of a writing seminar. Swift has even just opened her own library, even if only for three days: In Los Angeles’ shopping mall “The Grove”, fans can shorten the waiting time until the record by browsing and browsing. But Tupac Shakur, Patti Smith and Drake have one thing of the 34-year-old: They have published their own volumes of poetry, although not all of their rhymes are as worthy of a Nobel Prize as those of Bob Dylan.

John Lennon: the word player

He was the first pop star to publish his own volume of poems and short stories. In doing so, he split the literary world into two camps in 1964 – “Oops, he can write!” and “Help, he can’t write at all!” Appropriately, the book was also called In His Own Writing (available on Amazon): a hodgepodge of nonsense, slapstick and bizarre puns that left some doubting Lennon’s cognitive and grammatical abilities. It starts with the first sentence: “Once upon a time there was a man who was partly Dave…” and continues with titles like “No flies on Frank”, “At the Zahnarscht”, “The Albernsbagger stupid opinion question about remote sawing” or ” “Halibut returns to Zurich”. Of course, Lennon was very fluent in English and was particularly inspired by Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”.

Bob Dylan: the Nobel Prize winner

The only pop star to win a Nobel Prize – awarded for “new poetic expressions in the American song tradition,” as the reasoning was in 2016. Dylan once said of himself that poetry was as important to him as music, and yet he preferred to publish his poetry on recordings rather than in book form. The poetry and prose collection “Planetary Waves” (Hoffmann and Campe, 2017) provides insight into Dylan’s early works, in which he writes about his hometown and his first idols. Very humorous, but it probably wouldn’t have been a hit, as the excerpts from “My Life in a Stolen Moment” show:
…Hibbing is a good old town
I ran away from her when I was 10, 12, 13, 15, 15 ½, 17 and 18
I was caught and brought back again and again except once
I wrote my first song for my mother and called it “For Mother”
I wrote it in fifth grade and the teacher gave me a B plus
I started smoking when I was eleven and only stopped once to take a breath…

Leonard Cohen: the black romantic

Leonard Cohen once said jokingly that he only picked up the guitar because he earned even less as a poet than as an after-work musician. Since his first volume of poetry, “Parasites of Heaven” in 1956, the Canadian has repeatedly published volumes of poetry, even if none have been able to match the success of song classics such as “Suzanne” or “Hallelujah”. It would have been deserved, as the posthumously published collection of poetry and notes “Die Flamme – The Flame” (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2016) proves. Because here too, Cohen shows himself to be the “black romantic” that the fans loved so much:
I’ve grown old / in a hundred ways / but my heart is young / & it still sings / about love / about death.”

Patti Smith: the punk poet

For Patti Smith, it all started with the word and not the chord: She began her career as a poet with readings in New York clubs. But she has never let go of poetry and her role models William S. Burroughs and Arthur Rimbaud – Smith has written around two dozen books in the past 50 years, collections such as “Babel” and the celebrated biographies “Just Kids” and “M Train”. She repeatedly explores her childhood, and the images she finds are like that Music. Like the opening lines of “Dance in the Barn” from “Traumsammlerin” (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2013):
“A child’s mind is like a kiss on the forehead – open and unbiased. She spins like a ballerina on a tiered birthday cake with lots of icing, poisonous and sweet.”

Lana Del Rey: the poppy one

At first it was just supposed to be a slim booklet that Lana del Rey wanted to bind herself and sell for just one dollar. But then “Violent Bent Backwards Over The Grass” (Simon & Schuster, 2020) was released as a 128-page volume, accompanied by an opulent spoken word album with background music. Unfortunately, this is a great example of how pop lyrics can be very poetic and deep as lyrics, but as poems they can be very prosaic and shallow.
“Paradise Is Very Fragile
And It Seems Like It’s Only Getting Worse
Our Leader Is A Megalomaniac
And We’ve Seen That Before
But Never ‘Cause It Was What The Country Deserved”
(Paradise is very fragile
And it seems like it’s getting worse.
Our leader is a megalomaniac
And we’ve seen this before,
but not because it was what the country deserved)

Drake: the pompous one

“I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted more in my life for people to buy or support something more.” That’s what the rapper Drake said when his first book of poetry was published last year – with the pretty title “Titles Ruin Everything.” The problem with “Titles Ruin Everything” (Phaidon, 2023): Drake’s rhymes ruin a lot of things too. Often they are just short sayings that make sense and are nonsense and are blown up on two pages. A little taste test? Trigger warning: You’ll want to brush your teeth afterwards! Please:
“There Are Two Types Of Women In This World / Women Who Like Giving Head And Women Who I Don’t Like”
(There are two types of women in this world / women who like blowjobs and women I don’t like)

Tupac Shakur: the rap rhymer

It wasn’t just the music of the rapper, who was shot dead in 1996, that was a phenomenon – his poetry collection with poems that he had written as a teenager, published almost ten years later by Simon & Schuster, was also a phenomenon. Tupac fans flocked to bookstores, and when the audio version came out, it even cracked the top 200 on the pop charts. The poems deal with everyday life in the ghetto, but are also quite bluntly romantic, like the sweetly titled “The Rose That Grew From Concrete” (Simon & Schuster, 2005):
Did You Hear About The Rose That Grew From A Crack In The Concrete?
Proving Nature’s Law Is Wrong It Learned To Walk With Out Having Feet.
Funny It Seems, But By Keeping It’s Dreams, It Learned To Breathe Fresh Air.
Long Live The Rose That Grows From Concrete When No One Else Cared
(Did you hear about the rose that grew out of a crack in the concrete?
She disproved the law of nature and learned to walk without feet.
Funny it seems, but by following her dreams she learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete while no one else cared)

Alicia Keys: the tearful one

Not even her fans could make sense of it: in the mid-2000s, Alicia Keys was one of the most successful singers in the world, she received an offer to which she would have been better off saying no – would she want to publish a book? “Tears for Water” (Penguin, 2005) was released with the lyrics to her first two hit albums and 27 poems. The reviews were devastating. One would have liked to defend the then 24-year-old, but unfortunately lines from the poetry album made that impossible:
“Sometimes I feel/like I don’t belong anywhere/And it’s going to take so long/for me to get somewhere”
(Sometimes I feel / like I don’t belong anywhere / And it’ll take so long / to get somewhere)