A Guide to All the Literary References in Taylor Swift's 'The Tortured Poets Department'

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Taylor Swift's newest album, The Tortured Poets Department (and the surprise second part, The Tortured Poets Department: Anthology) is chock-full of literary references.

When it dropped, Swift posted on social media, noting that it was "an anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time - one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry."

Within Swift's "tortured poetry" are references to Shakespeare, Patti Smith, Nancy Mitford, Greek mythology, and so, so much more. Here, a guide to all the literary references we found in The Tortured Poets Department (and the Anthology):

Just Kids

Song: "The Tortured Poets Department" and "loml"

Lyric: "You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith" and "We embroidered the memories of the time I was away / Stitching, 'We were just kids, babe'"

Patti Smith gets not one, but two references on TTPD—one linking her with Dylan Thomas, and another to her memoir Just Kids. On Instagram, Smith reacted by posting a photo of herself and Thomas's memoir (see below), writing, "This is saying I was moved to be mentioned in the company of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Thank you Taylor."

The Pursuit of Love

Song: "The Bolter"

Lyric: "Then she runs like it's a race / Behind her back, her best mates laughed / And they nicknamed her 'The Bolter'"

In Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love, published in 1945, the narrator Fanny's mother is nicknamed "The Bolter" because she often abandons her family and her life for a more glamorous one.

The Secret Garden

Song: "I Hate It Here"

Lyric: "I hate it here so I will go to secret gardens in my mind/ People need a key to get to, the only one is mine / I read about it in a book when I was a precocious child"

One of the most literal literary references in The Tortured Poets Department is when Swift sings about reading The Secret Garden as a child.

Florida

Song: Florida!!! (feat. Florence + the Machine)

Lyric: n/a

This is not a specific lyrical reference, but Florence Welch posted on Instagram, "When Taylor Swift asked me to feature on Florida!!! I immediately thought of one of my favourite short story collections by Lauren Groff. Full of ghosts and swamps and storms."

Groff posted on X (formerly Twitter), "It has been a week full of amazing things but this shout-out by @florencemachine just shot me into the stratosphere. And the song is a BOP." She added, "This one goes out to everyone who ever made a face and told me that nobody reads short story collections. Don’t listen! Keep writing short stories!"

Dylan Thomas: Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog

Song: "The Tortured Poets Department"

Lyric: "You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith"

Dylan Thomas was a Welsh poet, and Smith shared his memoir when she thanked Swift for including her on the track.

The Essential Emily Dickinson

Song: "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys"

Lyrics: "Oh, here we go again / The voices in his head / Called the rain to end our days of wild"

Swift has previously referenced the works of poet Emily Dickinson, including possibly naming her album evermore after a line in Dickinson's poem "One Sister have I in our house." Close reads of TTPD lyrics reveals this reference to Dickinson's "Wild nights - Wild nights!"poem, as Swift sings about "days of wild."

Little Women

Song: "The Manuscript"

Lyric: "The professor said to write what you know"

On the final track on Swift's The Tortured Poets Department: Anthology, she sings about a professor who told her to write what she knows, a reference to a line in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, in which Professor Bhaer tells Jo March to "write what she knows."

The Complete Poems

Song: "The Albatross"

Lyric: "She's the albatross / She is here to destroy you."

When a sailor shoot an albatross, a bird believed to be a sign of good fortune, in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," he is forced to wear the dead animal around his neck, as a symbolic reminder of his mistake.

A Wrinkle in Time

Song: "So High School"

Lyric: "The brink of a wrinkle in time / Bittersweet sixteen suddenly."

On track 22, Swift sings about her relationship with Travis Kelce, feeling like she's time traveling to being in high school and 16 years old. She references Madeline L'Engle's famed time travel novel, A Wrinkle in Time.

The Iliad

Song: "Cassandra"

Lyric: "So, they killed Cassandra first 'cause she feared the worst"

The whole of Swift's song "Cassandra" is inspired by the Trojan priestess who appears in Ancient Greek mythology and had the gift of prophecy. Notably, Cassandra appears both in Homer's The Iliad and Virgil's The Aeneid.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Song: "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?"

Lyric: "Who's afraid of little old me?"

The title of this song is possibly a reference to Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, a 1962 play and film that explores a failing marriage.

Romeo and Juliet

Song: "The Albatross"

Lyric: "A rose by any other name is a scandal"

This lyric refers to one of Juliet's lines from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, where she tells Romeo, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet." The line is sometimes mistakenly shortened to "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

The Great Gatsby

Song: "So Long London"

Lyric: "I saw, in my mind, ferry lights through the mist / I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift"

Track 5 of TTPD includes the line "ferry lights through the mist," a reference to how Nick sees the green light across the water in The Great Gatsby.

Peter Pan - the Original 1911 Classic

Song: "Peter"

Lyric: "You said you were gonna grow up / Then you were gonna come find me"

Like "Cassandra," the entirety of "Peter" seems to be inspired by a literary work: This time, Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. There are references to the "Lost Boys" and not wanting to grow up. It also harkens back to her song "cardigan," in which she sings about "Peter losing Wendy."

Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)

Song: "So Long London"

Lyric: "So how much sad did you think I had / Did you think I had in me? / How much tragedy?"

Another Shakespeare reference found on the album is to Lady Macbeth, who remarks to her husband "Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" The structure of this lyric is very similar, and also links to Macbeth through its use of "tragedy."

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