The Swiftie and The Scholar - Finding Life’s Meaning in Epiphany

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

We are tackling one of the most underrated tracks from Taylor Swift’s folklore album, epiphany. The poem compares past war tragedies to 2020’s pandemic, and Uncle Jerry uses the poem to teach us about Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory. *Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!Works Cited:Wilfred OwenSiegfried SassoonThe Death of the Ball Turret Gunner – Randall JarrellThe Angels at Hamburg – Randall JarrellVignette poemsRhapsody on a Windy Night – T. S. EliotTrocheesIambsThe Song of Hiawatha – Henry Wadsworth LongfellowErnest Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory*Death in the Afternoon – Ernest Hemingway CaesuraParallelismSynecdoche*The Things They Carried: The Classic Work of American Literature on War, Memory, and Storytelling –Tim O'Brien *Man's Search for Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent – John MiltonThe Swiftie and The Scholar Grading MatrixFollow Us:Patreon⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Threads⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠Uncle Jerry’s InstagramAngela’s YouTube Channel

Welcome to The Swiftie and The Scholar, the podcast where we examine the lyrics, lore, and literary legacy of Taylor Swift. I am Angela McDowell the Swifty. And I am Dr. Jerry Coates, the scholar. How are you doing, Uncle Jerry? Hey, I'm doing swell. Yeah. What's you been doing? What's you been out to since we last spoke.

Let's see. We got back from Arkansas. Mm-hmm. I don't think that was on the last one, was it? Don't remember. Don't remember. Yeah, I made a couple of posts from Arkansas. You did.

People are loving your Instagram posting. You know, I just take a picture. Yeah, we were in that gift shop, and I saw the book on Taylor Swift, and I picked it up, and I said, Leslie, take a picture of this. And I didn't really read it. I mean, I read a couple of pages. I did read something that actually comes to be important in today's poem. I know. I know.

I was just like I randomly opened it up to the middle of a page, and there was her, grandfather. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. He's in military uniform. He must have been in the military. And so I read the little blurb, and I thought, huh. Yeah, weird timing, that is. We went to dinner last night. Yes, we did. Yeah. We, a couple of patrons reached out some viewers that have been here since the beginning, and they were coming through town. And so we met up with them. We got friendship bracelets from them, which is so nice. I got a plaid shirt, Days one, and you got a... I got... Life is just a classroom. Life is just a classroom. Which is perfect. So that was really fun. That was nice. That was fun. And I got called out.

Yeah. Tell us about that. Well, we were talking about favorite Taylor Swift songs, and they asked me if I was ready to say I was a Swiftie yet. And I said, you know, okay, so I go back and can I reread the poetry sometimes. And actually I have this, this is my book. Oh my gosh, look at the notes. These are the notes of episodes 1 through 50. So they're all in here. And I, you know, so I pull that down off the shelf and look at it from time to time

so I can reference things that we've done or notes I've made or, you know, cross, you know, comparison of her poetry. And so I said, I reread the poetry, but I really don't listen to the songs. again. I mean, the songs that I've listened to since you play them for me are all too well in Peter. And the rest of them, I really haven't re-listened to. So I said, you know,

I think you have to be engaged with the songs, with the music, to really be a Swifty. And Lewis said, I think you're in Swift denial. You went from Swift Curious. Yeah. To all of us just calling you a Swifty,

and then now you're in Swift Denial. In a T-shirt that says Swift and Isle. Yeah. I'm in Swift and Isle. Yeah, I think so. I just thought it was clever, so thanks very much. I might have it made. We'll do that.

We've got to get on the merch. Yeah. Okay, so today. Today? We are back in our folklore era, and we are covering Epiphany. Yes. Which a lot of people said we should do after the Great War, because there's some, like, they're not really similarities,

but there's like a similar theme there, I guess. Yeah, it resonates. Yeah. And so since I think this is going to get us over halfway through folklore. Oh, okay. And so I thought that before we finish that album, I would read you the,

she always writes like an epilogue, or a prolog or an epilogue for her albums that go, that she'll put on social and they go inside the vinyl and stuff. And so I thought maybe I would, would read the folklore one today. Oh, okay, great. Just so, because I think you'll, you'll understand so many of the references, and then there's

some that we'll have to come. And then, yeah, maybe we'll finish folklore one of these days. Okay. Yeah, it would be fun to have a whole album, like, all in our hands so that I can really think about it thematically. Yeah, agreed. If y'all want to still just, like, abandon everything else and finish folklore now, please let me know.

Everyone has different opinions, so it's not actually that helpful. but if but if there is like a majority it's always like half and half like yes and no so I never I never know what to do but anyway let me just read this

because I think it's it's really like a fun tie in with all of the all the songs okay it started with imagery visuals that popped into my mind and piqued my curiosity stars drawn around scars

okay yeah great line A cardigan that still bears the scent of loss 20 years later. So I think this is Taylor saying that cardigan, because you were saying, cardigan definitely happens in the future, like further on the future from Betty in August. And I think she's saying here it's happening 20 years in the future, which is interesting. Battleships sinking into the ocean down, down, down. The tree swing in the woods of my childhood. Hushed tones of let's run away and never doing it.

The sun-drenched month of August sipped away like a bottle of wine. A mirrored disco ball hovering above a dance floor. A whiskey bottle beckoning. Hands held through plastic. A single thread that for better or worse ties you to your fate. Pretty soon these images in my head grew faces or names

and became characters. I found myself not only writing my own stories, but also writing about or from the perspective of people I've never met, people I've known or those I wish I hadn't. An exiled man walking the bluffs of a land that isn't his own, wondering how it all went so terribly, terribly wrong. An embittered tormentor showing up at the funeral of his fallen object of obsession.

A 17-year-old standing on a porch learning to apologize. Oh, that's great. James. Oh, yeah, that's a great image. Yeah. Love struck kids wandering up and down the evergreen high line. My grandfather, Dean, landing at Guadal Canal in 1942. A misfit widow getting gleeful revenge on the town that cast her out.

A tale that becomes folklore is one that has passed down and whispered around, sometimes even sung about. The lines between fantasy and reality blur and the boundaries between truth and fiction become almost indiscernible. Speculation over time becomes fact. Myths, ghost stories and fables, fairy tales and parables, gossip and legend. Someone's secrets written in the sky for all to behold. In isolation, my imagination has run wild, and this album is the result, a collection of

songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness. Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory. Oh, there you go. I've told these stories to the best of my ability. with all the love, wonder, and whimsy they deserve. Now it's up to you to pass them down. Okay. I just think that's so fun.

I'm like reread that every once in a while, and I'm like, wow, Uncle Jerry can actually get like several of those images now. Right, yeah. Well, that's cool. Yeah, so we'll reread that once you're done with folklore. I like the idea that we're the caretakers of the story now. It is folklore, so it gets passed down. Yeah.

So, and it's also maybe a little hubristic to say that, she wants them to be remembered as folklore, you know, because then it would be a generational music. Oh. So I do wonder if people will be listening to Epiphany in another generation. Maybe so. You know, like you think about music from the 1930s. Uh-huh. You know, how many people listen to the Continental.

Yeah. Or my buddy or, I don't know. Yeah. You know. Probably just you, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know. Yeah, too many to think of always. It's a great song, though. Well, that's fun. Yeah. We'll have to go back at that when we finish. Exactly. I just wanted to, like, add that in today

because there's such a specific reference. But, yes, this is Epiphany. This is written by Taylor and Aaron and produced by Aaron. We are going to watch them talk about how this song came together a little later. Okay. Epiphany? Yeah, epiphany. You know, I will say since you read that little intro, she mentions her grandfather at Guadalcanal.

I didn't get that the first time I read it. It's like the image that came to my head was the beaches of Normandy. But the South Pacific was filled with these beach landings. Some of them fairly easy. Some of them just horrific. And, I mean, it's funny because when I did pick up that Taylor book in the gift shop at at Arkansas. You had sent this to me just before we left for Arkansas on our little family vacation.

And I had that Normandy Beach thing in my head and I open it up and there's a picture of her grandfather. And it mentioned, hey, it landed at Guadacanal on the beaches. And I thought, oh, wait a minute. I had a, what do you call it? A moment of sudden realization. An epiphany? Yeah, that's it. An epiphany.

In one sense, you know, the first verse is clearly. you know, hinging on this battlefield imagery, war imagery. And so it did remind me of some of those World War I poets that we had looked at before, Wilfred Owen or Zigfried Sassoon. It also reminded me of one of my favorite World War II poets, Randall Jarrell. And, you know, if you know Randall Jarrell, you probably have seen his anthologized poem, The Death of a Ball turret, Gunner. Okay.

So it's a very short little poem about a, a ball turret gunner on a bomber. So the ball turret fits up underneath the bomber. And a ball turret would generally be a small, slight man, because they have to curl up. Like, you know, your husband would never make it. No. You know, because they generally were, you know, small guys who could fit into the ball turret, and he gets killed on a bombing raid.

And they, the last line is they washed him out with a hose. God. Yeah. kind of horrible, but an image you don't forget. And so it's heavily anthologized. I really like Angels in Hamburg. You know, so if you want to take a look at Randall Gerald's poetry, he's really well worth the read. This is, what I found interesting about Epiphany was that it was a little different from her other poetry, especially some of the ones we've been looking at recently.

Yes, very much. Yeah, the ones we read recently have been intensely personal. Yes. And this is not really personal. It's more of a descriptive poem. And it's actually an interesting type of poem. Okay. So it's called a vignette poem.

Okay. So a vignette poem is where you take this concrete image and you just paint it with words. Okay. Right? So you take a, it's a vivid picture and you take a single moment or a series of tightly related moments or images or emotions and it collapses. time and you write about that. Yeah, you can just see that one little moment. Right. Yeah, and so it's a great, it's a great type of poem to have, you know, poets who are

starting out try to write. Okay. So you guys out there who are poets, you know, write a vignette poet, poem, you know, take a single snapshot, like take a snapshot of an event, someone riding a roller coaster, or take a snapshot of a traffic accident. You know, the red and blue lights, the red and white lights of the ambulance, the slam of the ambulance door, the carriage as it clacks onto the concrete, the glittering glass on the street.

So you can just imagine how you would take that and create a vignette poem. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. You know, I think one of the most famous vignette poems is T.S. Eliot's poem. Rhapsody on a Windy Night. So Rhapsie on a Windy Night, you know that Cats, the musical, is based on Old Possum's book of Practical Catch by T.S. Eliot,

but the song, Memory is based on Rhapsody on a Windy Night. And he paints this picture of an old woman in kind of ragged clothes by a streetlight in the middle of the night as wind is blowing. Okay. Right. And so you get that wonderful song memory from cats. Okay, yeah, yeah. And I don't know. You know, Taylor Swift might know that. She might. She might. And then I had a couple of notes on the format. I made a note that we see rhyme and assenance to conclude line, but the poem feels a little like free verse because it

lacks punctuation. So if you look, there are no end stops. I mean, it has a few commas, but there are no end stops. There are no periods, semicolens, colons, right? The images just tend to freely flow, you know. And I thought, oh, okay, so this is very close to free verse. And then I started looking at it in terms of its rhythmic pattern, and I realized, oh, my gosh, this is troquette. Okay.

So trokeys are accented. unaccented feet. So keep your helmet, keep your life son. Okay. Just a flesh wound. Here's your rifle, right? Crawling up the beaches now.

So it's ultra cake. Interesting. Okay. So that begs the question why. So I am big feet that go, you know, the hills were full of dark and glass, you know, dark and night. So,

but bum, but bum, but bum, it tends to sound more like ordinary conversation. Okay. So Shakespeare

writes in IAMs, um, uh, Robert Frost writes in IAMs. Trokees tend to be bum, bum, bum, bum,

it's like listening to the soundtrack to Jaws. Okay. Oh, yeah. It's like kind of anxiety inducing. Yeah, it creates anxiety. It's impelling.

It's like driving, driven. It gives you, it's like unstoppable momentum. Um, and there's, There are some very famous poems that use it, like Song of Hahuatha by Longfellow,

by the shores of Gitchie Gumi, by the big sea, shining water, stood the wigwam of of Gnomah's, daughter of the moon, Nicomis. Okay, yeah. So bum, bum, bump, bump up. And probably more famously, even though Shakespeare writes and Iams, in Macbeth, he has the witches chant double, double toil and trouble. Okay, yes, yes, yes. Right, as they're stirring the cauldron.

So, you know, it's funny how I got lured into the idea that it was free verse because of the punctuation, but then you really take a look at it. You go, oh, no, this is like driving trokeys. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense for the message. Well, I think so. Yeah. It really helps create the tone, this kind of driving sound.

You know, okay, so another thing to watch for, and I made an immediate note of this, I mean, it's easy to see if you read the poem backward. Okay, yes, of course, which we all did for homework. Yeah, you got to read it backwards. Look at the minimalistic or simplistic diction, right? The monosyllabism of the poem. Sun, life, your keep, helmet, your keep. Only one word has two syllables, all the rest are single. Rifle, your hears, wound, flesh, a just.

Right, again, you see these very minimalistic sounds. monosyllables that run through the poem. So this is something called the iceberg theory of Hemingway. So Ernest Hemingway was a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. Okay. And the Kansas City Star had a style sheet that gave to all their reporters for writing. And the style sheet had a bunch of rules. And some of the rules were things like no sentence longer than 10 or 12 words.

You know, never use any word more than three. You know, one or two syllable words are preferable. You know, the idea is to bear bones the story and let the reader supply the emotion and interpretation. Right. Right. You might put emotion and interpretation under or behind it, but you bear bones the story. That's why it's called the iceberg theory or the theory of omission.

So I'll just up here. Not the stuff that's down here. And Hemingway writes about that. I mean, he says in death in the afternoon, which is a nonfiction book that he wrote, In death of the afternoon, he says that, you know, an iceberg is one eighth above the surface and seven eights below the surface. And your writing should be like that. Interesting. And see, I think this poem is just like that.

Interesting. Yeah, where she just gives you the tip of a description and in your mind you backfill the rest of the description. Yeah, you've got to do the work. Right, you do. Well, and it's really, it's a method of writing that trillions. trust the reader. Mm-hmm. Right?

Because you have to trust the reader to understand your words to backfill the emotion and to backfill the description that is implied, but not implicitly present. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ask me if I like this poem. Did you like this poem? Yeah, yeah, I really. Yeah, I really did. So verse one.

Okay. I suppose we should talk about the poem now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just look at the simple diction. Keep your helmet. Keep your life sun. So you have a Sishira, right?

So when she sings, she's going to sing, keep your helmet, keep your life, son, right? So she's going to hit that Syshura. Same thing with the next line, just a flesh wound. Pause, Sishira. Here's your rifle, right? So she's going to sing it like that. It has parallelism.

So keep your helmet, keep your life. So your helmet equals your life. So it has Synecichy, representing a part for the whole. So the helmet is all about survival. Right. Right. So the helmet, everything else, all the other paraphernalia that a soldier would carry or wear. It has imagery, clearly.

It's war imagery. It has compressed diction, right? Typical of like military instruction. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, you just got to speak and move along. Yeah.

So, I mean, it only has like five different. things going on. And that's the beauty of the iceberg theory. If you really apply it, I mean, Hemingway does. You know, they have a Hemingway writing contest every year. Yeah, you know, if you ever read Hemingway, I mean, go and look at Hemingway. Just take the sun also rises and open up the text and read a paragraph. I mean, it'll be things like, we walked in the afternoon. It was hot. We carried two bottles of wine. Interesting. We put the wine in the river. We drew it out when it was cold. You know, it's like...

So simple. Yeah, so minimalistic, but so impactful emotionally. Yeah. Because, you know, you don't know what's going on with the people carrying the wine. Okay, so clearly we have a war scene. Keep your helmet. Keep your life. Just a flesh wound.

Here's your rifle. Okay, so now this is almost a slight time slip in scene, right? So we have a seizure again. We have understatement. It's just a flesh wound. Okay, if I were shot or had shrapnel. Yeah. Nobody gets to tell me this is just a flesh wound.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I might be whining like a baby. Yeah. No, son, get up. Here's your rifle. Yeah.

Right. Keep going. The rifle may be a metaphor or a symbol of ongoing responsibility. Right? You have to carry it with you. So it's the things we carry to borrow. Have you ever read that novel? No.

Oh, yeah, the things we carry is very, well, I don't know if it's autobiographical, but it's a Vietnam War story. Okay, okay. Right. And it's really good, by the way. We use it in some developmental English classes. Okay. Yeah.

You know, so I said it's a kind of time slip, and I'm going to kind of go back and take another look at that. crawling up the beaches now. So you see now, again, you're having these timesuits. Yeah, we moved a little, yeah. Right. So we're not describing the entire battle. We're not describing, remember to wear your helmet.

Okay, it's just a flesh room. Get up and carry your rifle. Okay, you know, crawl on, you know, move forward in the beach. You know, so we're not getting the whole thing. We're just getting enough so that we understand the threat. And it's almost a minimalism of language that underscores that threat. Agreed. Yes.

Yeah. So yeah, this is her lieutenant colonel granddad, who is on Guadalcanal. And you can see how on my first read, I thought this sounds like Normandy. Oh, for sure, because it's just beaches and war. So like the first thing you think of when you think of a beach, or the first thing I think of is Normandy. And I actually wrote that in my notes. I said allusion to the beaches of Normandy. Okay, yeah.

Okay, so I stand corrected. Allusion to the beaches on Guadalcanal. Yeah. It is directional imagery. You notice how they're moving up. Up is a symbolically difficult path, but up leads to success. Right.

Yeah, we talked about this a couple weeks ago. Up is how you want to go. Look at her diction. They're not walking up the beach or running up the beach. They're crawling, you know, crawling for fear, crawling like an animal. You know, just foot, you know, crawling like an insect. Uh-huh.

You know, so like one of many. So you see these hundreds, maybe thousands of men on a beach and, and your one. You know, her addiction does that iceberg thing. Mm-hmm. Right. And I mean, I think it's lovely. Yeah. And the crawling is also like, it's more, you know, effortful.

Like you're really like, you're down, crouching, trying to stay safe while also trying to move forward and it's just like much more difficult that way. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, all of that is like all the things we said like, like, like, like, all of that isn't just one word. So there you go.

Right. It's an iceberg. Yeah. Yeah. Seven eighths of it is is underneath the word and you have to trust the reader to get that. So it's very minimalistic five words and it allows the reader to complete this whole picture. Yeah. Like a whole image in your head.

Right. Like a movie. Yeah, and, you know, I think she also trusts the reader then to know a little history. Right. Right. She trusts you to know that there have been beach invasions, whether it's Normandy or Guadalcanal or whatever fills your head. Yeah. But, you know, you've seen Spielberg's movie or you've seen, you know, an old movie with John Wayne, or you've seen real battle footage, or some of you may actually have experienced this.

Right. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, she trusts us as readers. Sir, I think he's bleeding out. Okay, so we have dialogue, you know, direct dialogue. And, you know, so who's speaking? Someone taking care of a wounded soldier. You notice, again, look at the diction.

I think, right, uncertainty, heightened tension, you know, and she wants us to feel that. She wants us to feel the tension. Again, she's using that tropeic meter. I think he's bleeding out, you know. And so it impels you down that dramatic line. Notice bleeding out. It's clinical.

It's not poetic. No. That's not a pretty phrase. Yeah. But she doesn't want pretty. Yeah. It's in the moment. It's the reality of the moment.

And then some things you just can't speak about. You know, the whole words fail us, cliche, is kind of embedded in this line. And it's true. Soldiers returning from war frequently don't talk about the experience. Right. Yeah. It's just too hard to remember or to re-remember.

You know, I had a neighbor who was in Vietnam. Hey, he never talked about it. Yeah. You know, I asked him about his experiences and he said, I just can't talk about it. And so, you know, you just have to respect that. my dad was in Korea he flew rescue missions

from his helicopter and he told me a couple of stories but he didn't like to talk about yeah yeah you know have the the the bad the really bad things that happened like they just can't

yeah because who does want to talk about that right I mean who wants to relive that yeah no okay so go back to the start of the of the verse and and look at the time slip, you know, that she runs through with her iceberg. Keep your helmet on is instructions

before landing or just as landing. You know, here's your, you're okay. Here's your rifle. Is hitting the beach. And then crawling up the beaches is the landing progressing. And then, sir, I think he's bleeding out is a serious wound that kind of climaxes as the landing continues and a wound that ends in death. Right. So, you know, we had this time progression, but all in a very short time. It is, it's that perfect vignette poetry as well. That economy of language that you were talking about before. Yeah. Yeah, it's really nice. I mean, it's a lovely first stanza, and she does a great job with Diction to build tension. Then we get to the chorus. Yes.

Chorus is two whole lines. Two lines. I know. It's, it's, it's. It's, it's, it's, it's. It's, it's, it's, It's very rare that I see her do that. Or if there is a course with two lines, it has a pre-course and a post-course or something, you know. Or it leads right to the bridge. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Something like that. With you, I serve.

With you, I fall down, down. So we have a Sysheira. We have directional diction, you know, directional imagery. We were going up the beaches. We were going up the beaches. But now that we have the death imagery, we're going down. Interesting. Yeah, it has repetition.

She wants to underscore with you, so the camaraderie of the battle, but also the directional imagery of down, down. We have parallelism. And we have this ambiguous notion of falling. You know, I fall down. Is it physical collapse? Is it emotional collapse? Is it military casualty? Is it a spiritual?

collapse. Yes, all of that. Yeah. Yes. I know. That's why we call it ambiguity. And the answer is yes. Yeah.

And so she gives us, again, one word, and we're supposed to see the rest of the iceberg. Yeah. I'm going to keep saying that. Yeah. Watch you breathe in, watch you breathing out, out. So again, we have directional imagery. We've been going up, now we're going down, and now we're going out, out. You know, she doesn't do this accidentally.

You know, this is not oops, up, down, out. All the directions are. She's maintaining her syshera. She's got this terrific imagery. She's got repetition, parallelism that we see in the first verse. So, you know, it's two lines. I also like the use of word, you know, watch you breathe. You know, that's what really made me wonder if falling down was a spiritual collapse or an emotional collapse, something beyond the physical collapse.

Because, you know, the word breath in Latin as spiritus. Oh, yes, we've talked about this. Yeah, so we got the word inspiration from it. You know, the breath of God. You know, in antiquity, they believed that the breath, that your breath was a symbol of your life, the spirit that burns within you that requires this air moving in and out. That's interesting.

Yeah. So I just, you know, I like the chorus. I like the fact that it's almost all monosyllabic. I love the diction. Yeah. Sorry. It's lovely work. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. Verse two. Yes. And there are only two verses.

I know. This is a short, succinct little poem. It is, yeah. Something med school did not cover. Okay, so you notice how we have parallelism and lines, you know, breathe in, breathe out. or, you know, with you, I serve, with you, I fall down. But we also have parallelism of the verses. Right. So in the first verse of the war imagery, we say, keep your helmet, keep your life's on. So it's like instructional elements. And what are we talking about in the first line of the second verse?

Not getting instruction. Right. We're talking about those instructional elements or the things the instructor did not cover. Yeah. You know, something med school did not cover. Education doesn't prepare you for grief. Education doesn't prepare you for sadness or things you cannot change. Right.

Right. Interestingly enough, they have been including courses. I heard an interesting story on NPR several months ago that a number of different schools, they interviewed the professor who was teaching at Johns Hopkins, teaches a course to aspiring doctors on how to address. grief, how to address terminal illness or dying. How do you talk to a patient? I know, right?

And for centuries, we haven't really examined that. But how do you talk with someone, you know? I mean, when Diana, your aunt, the last time we went to the cancer center and they looked at her numbers the last time about six weeks or so before she passed, I mean, the doctor just looked at her and said, you have four to eight weeks. And, I mean, it's hard. I mean, how do you handle those moments?

So addressing, you know, disease is a tough thing. Yeah, absolutely. The next line, someone's daughter, someone's mother, parallel forms, I share a repetition. Clearly we're moving away from World War II imagery into an extended metaphor or conceit, revolving around what I assume is the pandemic.

Yeah. Right. So, I mean, just the date that 2020. Yes. Yeah, this was written right in the height of kind of the worst of it, you know, those first few months when the hospitals were filling up and there was nothing anybody could do about it. Well, and taking a terrible toll on doctors and nurses. Exactly.

You know, I remember that, you know, there was some. Some nurses, you know, who just, they just go in every day and they, you know, as they would get sick, you know, their numbers were depleted and it was just, it was a crisis in many ways. Yeah. Some of them, like, couldn't even go home because they had, you know, sick people at home or babies or something and they, like, couldn't even, they had to go stay somewhere else because they couldn't go home and risk, like, infecting their, you know, immunocompromised or not yet strong

enough immune systems or their kids and stuff. And so it is, I think it's very clever the way that she in the second verse is saying like this situation that the world was in, specifically the medical staff

that they were in is so similar to what these men went through all those years ago. And obviously it's very different, but it's just like they're serving together, they're risking lives, they're struggling and not sleeping and, you know, it's just like, I don't know, I just think it's a very interesting parallel that she made.

So fighting a different kind of war. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, clearly she's, you know, here we've got two different metaphors, two different conceits that are extended about through two different verses, but they're beautifully parallel. And she uses parallel language throughout that.

So, yeah. I love the line someone's daughter or someone's mother. too because there are no names, you know, only relationships, you know, so that she universalizes what the pandemic does to all of us. Yeah, because it's like affecting somebody that you know, somebody that you care about, like it's affecting all of us in that way, even if it doesn't directly, like, get you and you don't go to the hospital. Right. Yeah, you know, I mean, so one of, my son-in-law, Jonathan, not the one who lives just blocks away, but the other one. You know, his grandfather in the first few months of COVID got COVID, and he was an old guy with respiratory problems, and he went into the hospital, and he never came out.

Yeah. He passed away during COVID in the hospital. And, you know, it was at that time when it was, you know, at a stage when it so highly contagious and they were so worried about it that, you know, they only let family members in full gear come to the door and look in, you know. And so it was a hard thing, you know. So by saying someone's daughter, someone's mother, you know, someone's grandfather, it creates a sort of universal empathy and underscores the emotion of the moment. Holds your hand through plastic now, the plastic, the protective equipment. It's also a symbol of separation, right?

So, you know, there's something about touching someone else's flesh. someone's skin, you know, to do so with gloves on or overplastic. Yeah, just not the same. It's not the same. And then in true parallel form with the previous first, Doc, I think she's crashing out. So we have dialogue. We don't know if it's a nurse or another doctor, but clearly it mirrors the dialogue of the battlefield.

You know, here we have the same emotion. Right. We have the helplessness of it, the I think, you know, the uncertainty of it, the heightened tension of it. I think she's also saying that history repeats itself. Oh, that's interesting. Right. Yeah. That humanity will always go through these battles through these struggles.

Yeah. Every generation has like something that they went through, I guess. And there are some things you just can't speak about. Yeah. Right. I mean, having lived with my first wife through nine months of cancer, you know, there are some things I'll talk about. There are some things that I just can't talk about. Right.

So it's just, you know, I can't imagine what doctors and nurses, what men on a battlefield, men and women on a battlefield now, the soldiers think about and have trouble speaking about. and what happens to their emotional well-being when they have to keep that bottled up. Right. Yeah. You know, I remember hearing so many stories like they would interview doctors and nurses during the height of COVID. And some of them were talking about how their hospitals were unprepared for them to change clothes. This one nurse talked about how she would drive home, go into the garage and then just strip down entirely and, you know, wash off in the garage. Like before we knew how things were, how COVID was transmitted.

Right. Yeah. We were just taking all kinds of precautions because we just didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, if you go back up at the top of verse one and look at the time slip. So something med school didn't cover is addressing the disease generically or holistically. It's something you would do in school prior to having treatment.

And then someone's daughter, someone's mother. so that's identifying and caring for the patient and then holds your hand through plastic now. So now indicates the progression of the disease. Oh, yeah, and we had crawling up the beaches now. Now. Okay, yeah. Yeah, and then it's, Doc, I think she's crashing out,

so the climax of the disease and approaching death. And then the inability to speak about it, there are no words. So you had that exactly the same time progression going, Yeah. Line to line to line to line. Yeah. And also with the chorus in between these two, her using breathing, what I'm picturing is like, I'm watching this man bleed out and I'm watching him breathe in and out until

maybe he's not going to anymore. You know? And so that's like the breathing in and breathing out. And then same with COVID. That was. Yeah. Respiratory disease. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And so, and then, you know, people were on ventilators and stuff. And so you could, you could sit there. in the room with them and watch them breathe in and out until they don't anymore, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, essentially the emotion is the same. The result is the same. It's just the uniforms that change. Exactly. Yeah, you go from the soldier's uniform to a doctor or nurse's uniform. But we're not done. We have a bridge. Yes.

Only 20 minutes to sleep. So now we're in the life of the caretaker. 20 minutes. Just just a nap, you know, just the idea that in the next line the person is dreaming indicates the level of fatigue. Yeah. You know, because generally you don't start dreaming in just 20 minutes. Right. Yeah, unless you have really been up. So if you've been up doing something caring for someone else or studying or.

Yeah, all day, like for 24 hours or something, yeah. Grading papers. Yeah, I used to stay up late and rain. papers can't do that anymore. Yeah, happily. Yeah. Yeah, sleep kind of symbolic of a luxury. There is no luxury.

You know, and then we contrast sleeping with death, right? You get 20 minutes of sleep, but the patient is literally going to have an eternity of sleep. So you had, right, this nice juxtaposition. Yeah.

But you dream of some epiphany so the line introduces the title of our poem searching for meaning even in our dreams but meaning is elusive how do you pick this one soldier

on a beach of thousands and he's going to die you know how do you pick this one person in 340 million Americans or billions worldwide and say you're going to get COVID and you're going to die. Yeah.

You know, and it was so, you know, again, if you recall back over six or seven years, sometimes COVID deaths, I mean, we had several people. We knew or were close to us who died. And one of them was a guy at church who was like 45. Yeah. And in really good shape. And he went to the hospital and two days later he passed away. His wife, she had asthma.

she went into the hospital for three weeks and she came out just fine. Oh, gosh. I know, you know, it's like we just never knew. You never knew. I mean, we all were just completely bum-fuddled about how, you know, how was he chosen after two days to succumb to this disease? And his wife, who was in, you know, comparatively worse condition for enduring COVID, she came out after three weeks and she was okay.

Yeah. You know, it's hard to reconcile. It's hard to know. You want to know why. Right, exactly. You always are trying to figure out the answers to all the questions that you're asking, but there are just no answers. No. That's, you know, anytime someone asks me, you know, why does this happen?

I'm always reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Slaughterhouse Five. And I think I've mentioned this before. You know, Billy Pilgrim, the main character, gets carried off by space aliens. and he asks why. And the Trafalmodorans, the aliens, say, that is a very earthling thing to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why anything?

I mean, truly, though. Yeah. I know, you know, I read about this lady outside of Toronto who died when she got hit by a quarter-sized meteor. And you just, yes, meteorite. and you have to ask why? Like what? Great news.

The federal EV rebate is back. Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027 volt and 2026 Equinox EVM models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. Yes, how does that happen? So in their dream of delirium, our caretaker wants to know why. wants an epiphany, just one single glimpse of relief. I mean, the diction indicates this quest for some help, right? No matter how small.

One single, right. It's a minimalist request, right? We only want a glimpse. We don't even need to see the whole picture. Yeah. You know, again, she's using terrific diction, you know, not just the word simple, which minimizes the request, but glimpse. I don't even need to know the whole story.

Yeah. I just want to know there was a reason. It's not a request for happiness or joy or total release. It's emotional minimalism. It's scarcity. And maybe that's what times like this leave us with. To make some sense of what you've seen. So I was really hit by the line.

Okay. I was hit by the bridge. Okay. You know, her bridges are, as you pointed out early on. Yes. A year ago. Yeah. That's where the good stuff is.

It's where the good stuff is. So several years ago, I had a good friend of mine. Tommy Autry. He's not listening. Hi, Tommy. No, you're not listening, Tommy. He was a dean of math and science on our campus. So he's a math and science kind of guy.

But you should not draw conclusions. by what a person taught or administrates. Tommy was a very thoughtful guy, is a very thoughtful guy, and he read Victor Frankel's Man Search for Meaning. Okay. And he got a copy, and he said, you're going to like this book, and he gave it to me.

Okay. And it's just a little thin paperback, and I read it until the pages popped out of the glue, or I would show you my copy. Oh, my gosh. But no, I don't have my copy. So it's a short book. And, you know, if you're interested, pick it up.

He was in a, Victor Frankel was in a prisoner of war camp during World War II. And he saw death wholesale. And so he writes this book, Man Search for Meeting. And he, in the book, he identified trying to find purpose in life through one of three ways. So I wrote them down so I wouldn't forget them. One is through completing tasks. You know, just every day you realize you have to live, you have to press on, you have to find meaning. And so you find meaning in finding your food, you know, in getting up, finding your food, completing your basic tasks of life.

A second way Frankel says that you find meaning is by caring for another person. Mm-hmm. Right? You have to be outside of yourself. You have to care for someone. And a third way of finding meaning is by facing suffering with dignity. We're not sure why we suffer, but facing it with some level of dignity, yeah, is how we find meaning.

And he says, people can endure extraordinary suffering if they find meaning in it. That is very interesting. Yeah, so I thought, you know, what this poem is about is in two different, scenarios of people trying to find meaning in this extreme suffering in death. You know, where's the meaning in millions of people worldwide dying from COVID? Right. Where's the meaning in a world war, you know, that sends people up beaches? And let's think about the other side.

Where's the meaning in the Japanese soldiers to defend this little rock and to just, shoot people wholesale as they're coming up on the beach. Where is the meaning in all of those things? You know, where, how do we discover meaning? And so I thought of Frankl's book. Yeah, that's really interesting because obviously like this is not on the scale of that. But on the closing track to the tortured poets department, it's kind of about like, here's, it's called the manuscript.

And it's like, you know, I went through all these things when I, was younger. It's just the things that we all go through in life, you know, losing people and grief and sadness and heartbreak. And she says, and at last, I knew what the agony had, I knew what the agony had been for. And it's kind of about like how these stories, the stories that I lived and then told in my songs have now gone out to the world. And they're all of these people's now to like, you know, do what we're doing or like, you know,

relate to them in a certain way that helps other people heal. And it's like, so my agony was to help other people's agony. And that's kind of the same thing you're saying. Like, I'm suffering through these hard times with dignity because I'm able to, like, help other people with them. Care for someone else is what Bronkel says. Care for another person helps us derive meaning through suffering. Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I saw a, I don't, I can't remember if I've told this a little. story, but several years ago there was a wreck out on 35 of these kids coming back from a mission trip. No, I do remember that.

Yeah, it killed like seven or eight of them. And they were interviewing this one girl who survived, and she said, God still has a plan for me. And I thought, well, wait, does that mean God had no plans for the ones who died? But that's sad, you know, it's hard in those moments. And I'm not blaming the girl for saying. Yeah. to be alive and she was clearly going to be mourning her friends. Yeah.

But, yeah, it's hard to find meaning in those moments. Yeah. You know, where? Yeah, because why? Why? That's the, that one glimpse of relief to make some sense of what you've seen. Like, why? And that's just one of the ways that your brain starts to do that.

Yeah. It's like, there must be a reason, you know? No, that's a very earthling thing to ask. It certainly is. Then we get to the chorus, which is a repetition. So with you I serve, with you I fall down, down, watch you breathe in, watch you breathing out, out. And yeah, now I think we get that tie in with COVID, the breathing in, breathing in. Absolutely, yeah.

With you, I serve, with you I fall down, down, watch you breathe in, watch you breathe out, out. So you see, in appears only once, but out, out appears twice. So, yep, they breathe in, but the last out. is lights out. Lights out. Oh, no. Yeah, so it carries the repetition, not just of the first chorus,

but the double repetition in this chorus. It really works for me. You know, I said before about some of her songs, if I were going to publish this as a poem, I would probably edit out some of the redundancies that are included because it's a song. Right. I would not hear.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, I really, I like the repetition. I don't think it's redundant, I think it's repetition with a purpose. I think it carries the accumulated weight of the conceits, these two stories, these two vignettes that she is painted for us. So we've read the historic moments, the battlefield in the hospital, but now we want to carry the emotional weight of those moments.

And so it's because we carry that she repeats it. And now we have to sleep with it. Yeah. And that's how we go out of the poem. Yeah. Only 20 minutes to sleep, but you dream of some epiphany, just one single glimpse of relief to make some sense of what you've seen. Same as the bridge.

There's no epiphany. There's no explanation. There's no conclusion. There's no resolution. If there is an epiphany, it is experienced by the reader. Right. Right. Right.

Again, she's trusting us. Um, the epiphany is some experiences in life defy explanation. Hmm. Right. And that in itself is an epiphany. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

So the, the, the compassion. That's like a really upsetting epiphany. I can't help you. No, I'll try to help you. Because I want to find meaning. through caring for another person. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I think that we realize that compassion through bad times is the epiphany.

We have to care about the soldier dying. We have to care about the person in the hospital expiring and breathing their last. And that compassion, that love we have for mother or grandmother, you know, for the person in the hospital that she says anonymously someone's daughter, someone's mother. We have to care about them. And that love we share with human life is itself the epiphany.

Right. Yeah. So that's lovely stuff. So, you know, to recap literary devices throughout parallelism, juxtaposition, the mirrored vignettes. Yeah, lovely work. minimalism, sparse language, you know, the use of Hemingway's iceberg, imagery, lots of war imagery, helmets, rifles, battlefields, lots of COVID imagery, plastic barriers, breathing.

So even though she doesn't use a lot of words, she brings hard physical reality to the vignette. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So again, aspiring poets. Yeah. Just because you're using an iceberg doesn't mean you can leave out. the exactness of your imagery.

Right. She's very exacting. Use of direct dialogue. So we have the words of the person treating the soldier, the words of the person treating the daughter or mother, symbolism of survival and duty, and the irony that there is no explicit epiphany except compassion itself. And I did make a note that there were connection to other Taylor's.

with songs, The Great Warrior Convention. I think there's a connection to Marjorie as well. Okay, yeah, the grief. Yeah, the grief, the kind of quiet reverence. Yeah, and learning things from your grandparents that you maybe wish you knew more about, but you can't because either they're gone or they didn't want to talk about it. And she has that connection with her grandfather, you know, that maybe he didn't talk

about those experiences. But she, in her own mind, back fills the rest of the, iceberg and and shares his grief, shares his experience. And you remember that's Victor Frankel all over again. We discover meaning by shared experience and shared grief, by caring about someone else. So interesting. Yeah.

And so now, I mean, I'm anticipating a somber mood. We're not going to go shake it off here. No, we're not. We're not shaking anything off here. Right. Okay. Are you ready to hear? I'm ready, yeah. I'm kind of really curious to hear how she runs through this poem.

Okay, so we're going to watch the lyric video, and then we are going to watch your favorite long puddle. And her and Aaron Dessner talk about it a bit, and then we'll watch them play it. Okay, that's great. Yeah, we'll be right back. Well. All right. There you go. Epiphany.

Give us that final statement. Yeah, I've got my final statement typed up. Yeah, I said while we were watching the video, for those of you who are not Patreon folks. Why not? I know, you know, it's, it is fun. Just talking about it when we were watching, you know, some of the things, I thought, wow, I would use this to teach in a classroom.

So, yeah, when we were listening to the song, I thought that that one line really struck me with you, I serve, with you, I fall down, because it's that the sharing of collaborative emotion and the fact that our lives are so intertwined that in itself is meaning. You know, so I love the line, and I love the minimalism. I think, you know, Hemingway. Hemingway did write some poetry. I actually have his single volume of poetry back here. I know, I should pull it off the shelf. Yeah, the folks last night were laughing about the fact I always turned around just whipped at all. But I think Hemingway would be happy with this poem. Okay, so Jerry's final statement, epiphany indicates that history may shift time, but costumes and burdens remain the same.

Although beaches and hospitals are different locations, and soldiers and health professionals inhabit different worlds, they share the same vocation to stand by those who are suffering. When their professional occupations are inadequate, then they also serve who only stand and wait, which is a line from a poem by Milton, by the way. Okay, that did just kind of blow my mind a little bit. In Milton's poem on my blindness,

Milton was going blind, and his one trick is being a poet, and going blind you can't see to write. And so he is shaking his fist at God saying, you know, God, why would you take my sight from me? You know, but then in the Volta, in the octave of this little sonnet he writes, he says he realizes that maybe God has other plans or other things that God's doing. And the last line is they also serve who only stand and wait. Interesting. Yeah.

So through the sparse language and parallel structure, true heroism doesn't always result in victory or in rescue, but in simply being present with another human being when no epiphany arrives. Yeah. Just being present. Yeah. So. Yeah. Shall we grade that? Let's do it.

Grade that puppy. Boy, I would use this in a classroom. I think students would have fun with it because it's Taylor Swift. Right, yeah. But more than that, I think they would have fun with it because vignette poetry is kind of fun to write. You know, like you could do a follow-up assignment where you have them do write a vignette poem. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that would be fun.

And maybe even have them choose between iambic or trochaic meter. Oh, and explain why they chose. Yeah, why do you want to be conversational? Or do you want it to be, you know, impelling and dynamic? Okay, well, if y'all want to leave your vignette poems in the comments. That's right. Please do. Yeah, let me know.

I'll read them. I won't grade them. Promise. Okay. Epiphany from folklore. Lyrical strength. You know, I don't know if there's such a thing as a perfect poem. This is certainly as close to perfect as she gets.

Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and just say if an undergraduate student gave this to me, I would put 100. Okay. Yeah. Is that what we're giving, Taylor? Sure. Okay. Narrative and structure.

Okay. So again, the structure with this sort of bifold, you know, verse one, verse two, that are these perfectly parallel, perfectly, you know, imaged icebergs. I think it's just It's just perfect It's 100 Okay Oh my goodness Production and atmosphere

So I mean the music is appropriate Yes You know I was sitting there Trying to think What I listened to this is a song I think I would listen to it Like you said

It's a little hard Emotionally it's a little hard Yeah But yeah I would say It's appropriate to the song Yeah Yeah so 95 Okay.

Yeah, it's like not a good one for like driving around because it really just like kind of lowers the, lowers everything, you know, your energy or. Yes, maybe if I was taking a nap. Yeah, yeah. Although then I might have bad dreams. Lower and literary references and devices. Yeah, I mean, devices, I'd say it's very high in 98. Yeah. And emotional impact.

Oh, see, this one, this one should have. you hard. I mean, if Tommy Autry, math and science dean can give me Victor Frankel's work that carries the same interior message about how we recover meaning in situations that are just horrific, yeah, if you can read this without being emotionally touched, then you need to go back to emotion school and pick up some empathy. Maybe get a really extra helping of empathy. Absolutely, yeah. So 98.

Okay. That's 98.2. Yeah, it's good. I would use it. Okay, yeah. Yeah, this is an interesting one because it's not, you know, it's like, like she was saying in the Long Pond. Like it sounds different than anything she's really done. I think that the structure of it is really different.

Not confessional at all. Yeah. Yeah. It's that vineyard descriptive poetry. Yeah. Okay. That's a good one. It is a good one.

Yeah. Okay. Anything else? No, two thumbs up on this one. All right. 98 for another folklore song. Yeah. Okay.

We will be back next week with actually another folklore song. And make sure you are following us everywhere. You're subscribed on all your podcast platforms. You can follow the podcast on Instagram. TikTok at Swiftian Scholarpod. You can follow Uncle Jerry on Instagram at Dr. Uncle Jerry and you can follow me at Angela Wyatt McDowell.

Oh, and also, I have my own personal YouTube channel that many of you have already subscribed to, so thank you. But there will be regular videos coming there too. So I will link that in the description so you can go subscribe if you're having it. And we will see you next week. Sounds great.

Bye.