If I were going to write a poem next moment.

If I were going to write a poem this moment, it would be more like:

There was a young man named

Something or other whose father named him for himself

And he never figured out what that meant.

But he liked this girl who looked good in heels

Because that meant

There was more of her to look at

On her pedestals.

He don’t care what she wears

He don’t care what she does or where she been

Or who she think she is, anyways? Anyways?

Anyways, he liked this girl, anyways,

And he wants to stay with her on her islands

Because wherever that girl go, he go

And no man’s be an island but that girl

Is an archipelago!

I know you have the room, woman.

Sometime the man in me just come out,

Iffn’ you know what I mean,

And that ain’t dialectic

-ally correct, though the Yiddish is indeed

Fully sexual in a gender-

Specified manner

Of speaking,

About the act of speaking about the act,

Which when the act is speaking is quite an act.

He says, admiringly,

Across all the

Oh, stop it, now, you’re killing me

A little to the left, now, under the arm to the places you rarely touch anyways,

Which makes the game deliciously uncomfortable in the receptivity

Of reciprocity

Now,

Of reciprocity

Anyways.

See? That’s me.

Touch? That’s me.

Sniff? That may be you.

Taste? Both of us.

That voice in my ears

Is you in my head without a pause between what you think to what I hear

And back again.

Now we resonate anyways.

Now we resonate anyways.

[Reader note: this poem talks through the concept of ‘other’. The specific inspiration is her repeated reference to an island, which I took to mean her homes, the world she’s made removed from the public and her guarded life, so she is an archipelago. Much of the rest is play which defines him as sharing within her head in the ideal as he shares within his, from word play to sex play to the resonating voices as they pass across in layers between them. A key point is that it’s entirely respectful: no sense of anything, I hope, but ‘receptivity of reciprocity’, meaning they’re entirely equal across what they share and they’re open to whatever the other shares. It’s a love poem. The opening lines are self-referential: my dad’s name literally leads to mine so the idea is of a chain of meaning crossing time and space through generations as they call upon names from the past. The poem takes that chain and stretches it across to the more spiritual and ‘otherworldly’ connection of other to other. That is, my dad gave me a name but something else connects two people in this way. I include these notes because reading poetry is difficult. They’re not exhaustive, but they are truthful. I don’t understand the urge to be obscure. That is a major reason why I undertook this: in Taylor’s poetry, there is a crafted bluntness that overlays deep meanings. Her music is like that too. As each unspools, I hear the layers of thoughts behind the words and the delivery. A more hidden point about islands. In this conception, there is a reason beyond herself: she makes islands because her other needs them. She refers a number of times to being robbers, to dying in a getaway car, to being a betrayer. It’s not in this poem but the idea behind it is the idealized other needs sanctuary, which means she’s crafted her life in part to prepare for the him she calls to in her songs. Yes, I know she’s in a relationship, etc., etc. I’m talking about something else. Many love songs refer to a home, to a love as a sanctuary. I’m taking that to a more serious depth that she’s actually offering a world removed from the world. Ask yourself: who the heck wants that? Don’t you like to go out for dinner, to sit in a café or to wander through a crowd without bodyguards? People seek crowds. Who wants that? Someone who needs that. That’s what I mean about taking her seriously: if she’s offering, it’s for a reason and that reason, in this conception, is she’s offering herself and her island because her other says to her they’re going to need it.]