I Am A Vault of Unheard Sounds
This Week: The Book of Love by Kelly Link X The Tortured Poets Department
I thought about engaging with National Poetry Month in my newsletter but that would largely be disingenuous because I don’t looove poetry. It’s fine. I feel like talking about poetry in a real way would read as well as me telling you a knock knock joke as heard from my 7-year-old niece—I’ll spare you. My favorite form of poetry is what I’ll call Instagram poetry. It is contained to one Instagram slide which basically hits me over the head with a hammer to fit the tone of the day. By virtue of someone selecting this poem, the part of the work has already been done for me. Instagram poetry sometimes is just someone free associating words that say “please don’t kill yourself because your mom and your best friend will be sad.” Is it effective? Maybe! You might be sad but there are also potato chips and dresses with puffy sleeves and sunsets, so is it really that bad? It might be that bad but I do love potato chips, dresses with puffy sleeves, and sunsets, so you make an excellent argument.
The biggest event in my National Poetry Month was obviously Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. If you take issue with Taylor calling herself a poet of any stripe, you are in the wrong place! This album was a huge hit for me! I am a Reputation Sun, Evermore Moon, and Midnights Rising, so it was written in the stars. Women my age, Taylor Swift included, have fallen in love with themselves writing emails to guys who ultimately do not exist. Our love for them and our wild imaginations made them magically real, something to touch enough for two people. God, we are so fucking romantic! Love, romantic and otherwise, courses through our veins and is shed from our bodies in sweat, skin flakes, and so, so many strands of hair. It’s simply everywhere.
This Week’s Vocabulary List & Practical Applications: Sitting in a Tree, C-O-N-V-E-R-S-I-N-G
The title of this week’s newsletter is from The Book of Love and Mo makes mention of his musical writing life and its unknown depth. “I am a vault of unheard sounds,” rattled my brain and it resonates with hearing new music from a beloved performer… who we really don’t know even if she’s made her fans believe they do. We are all unknown and unheard until we aren’t!
You didn’t think I’d spend all of this time with two dense texts and not put themselves in conversation, did you? The Book of Love by Kelly Link, meet The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift! This week is going to be a little different where our two sections will be getting a little “So High School” with each other in a fun, sexy Vocabulary-Tangle, a shape that totally exists and I didn’t just make up right this second. I’m going to list the parade of words I pulled from The Book of Love in the Vocabulary List and then in Practical Applications, I’m going to pair each word with a song from The Tortured Poets Department based on its content or overall vibe. Then I’m going to make them kiss like Barbies.
Note: This list is alphabetized rather than by how I found them in the text.
Armature: (noun) an organ or structure for offense or defense
Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?
Mo and Thomas, as crows, fly close to the water and Mo admires melting snow upon his wings and the structure of the wings themselves. The wings are protective by both keeping them warm against the snow and in flight and away from predators. Gosh, I love birds! Birds are so cool.
“Don’t you worry folks, we took out all her teeth” is just about one of the most heartbreaking lyrics on the album. This song was definitely a shock to my system since it’s so angry and even when stripped of the armature of teeth, the narrator screams that we should still be afraid of her because she’s been made mean. Her power that has her leaping from the gallows and so on and so forth is the stand-in for what has already been taken from her.
Inimical: (adjective) tending to obstruct or harm, unfriendly or hostile
The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
Bogomil, my personal “I can fix him!,” explains to Laura about the key that hungry moon goddess Malo Mogge seeks and that it will be her eventual undoing if they succeed.
The titular SMWEL is inimical to our narrator whose sparkling summer was rusted by someone hiding in plain sight in stoned oblivion. What the narrator wants is bad for her and will be her undoing and it will feel SO BAD. Bad behavior, best bridge on the album.
Numen: (noun) the spirit or divine power over a thing or place
The Black Dog
Malo Mogge is bending people to her will and her will keeps people out of her business and no one takes real issue with her actions.
The narrator knows that her power over this place and the memories they made there will taint the future of them apart. “I hope it’s shitty at The Black Dog,” indeed.
Fun fact: I saw The Starting Line in a basement of a VFW in high school with Michelle and Jessica. The allusion to my actual So High School experience made us spiral that Taylor Swift might know of a band we used to hang out with and got reasonably well-known.
Plaintive: (adjective) showing or expressing sorrow, mournfulness
How Did It End?
After a surprising turn of events with her high school crush, Rosamel, Laura tells her that “things keep happening that I didn’t expect to happen.” Rosamel observes that Laura sounds sad in a way she didn’t expect considering the circumstances. The reader knows why Laura sounds sad but she’s largely unknown to Rosamel this way so it’s surprising to feel the opposite way.
My internet stepdaughter has really been going in on this song and I went back to see if I could twist some tears out of myself in the Aaron Dessner part of the Anthology. It worked! As we hereby conduct the postmortem of the narrator’s ended relationship that ended with the caveat that they will only tell their friends who will inevitably want to know what happened even though the narrator can’t pretend to know what happened. The relationship is dead, which is sad, but the act of it dying is so much sadder.
Plangent: (adjective) loud, reverberating, and often melancholy
Florida!! (feat Florence + The Machine)
Mo, who does not share his musical talent with anyone, tries to decide how to convey sadness and loneliness and describes an oboe’s tone quality. The theme of The Good Place is an oboe performance and that’s a show about the afterlife and acknowledging your flaws when it’s already too late.
The tone quality of Florence Welch’s voice is so calm but powerful when she tells the story of how the narrator finds herself in Florida in the first place. “Love left me like this/ and I don’t want to exist”
Plenipotentiary: (adjective)j having full power to take independent action
But Daddy I Love Him
In context, Mo describes his grandmother’s work as a romance novelist and the difficulty of speaking euphemistically.
Diplomatic relations with Sarahs and Hannahs have broken down because the narrator of the song is the only person with the authority or power to disgrace her good name, not the Empathy Police of Wine Moms.
Puissance: (noun) great power, influence, or prowess.
I Can Do It With a Broken Heart
Thomas describes working in Malo Mogge’s service for so many years and describes her overwhelming power that is ultimately irresistible to anyone who comes into contact with her.
So depressed you act like it’s your birthday? You contain puissance to put on a show of a lifetime, in your glittering prime. The narrator of the song is working at the top of her game, drawing from a deep well of talent, but is experiencing overwhelming inner turmoil.
Psychopomp: (noun) the spiritual guide to a living soul to the place of the dead
Clara Bow
Bogomil declines to give Laura a tour of the realm that begins the book. He makes it clear that even if he was her guide, her doesn’t like her enough to help her this way.
With each passing starlet who is crushed by the system, a new one takes her place where she will be shepherded toward her own replacement. The characters in the song are giving a tour of the future that included the tacit implication that it won’t last even if she is the “real thing.” See also: “Nothing New”
Valetudinarian: (adjective) showing undue concern about someone’s health
The Bolter
Mo tries to sever the magical connection with Thomas, who he believes is not real but a lesson to sharpen his magic.
Stories we tell ourselves about ourselves don’t always fit forever, especially if it’s beneficial to our well being. Sometimes you have to run away to save yourself and breathe clean air for the first time in a long while.
Since today’s intertextual conversations ran longer than my usual newsletter, my April reading report will be in next week’s edition!
Love,
Andrea
Thank you for stopping by Vocabulary School!
I wonder how 5 Days Ahead, Valencia, Days Away, Hidden in Plain View and all our other VFW basement crushes reacted to The Starting Line’s renewed quasi-fame.
Do you recall the name of the surf rock band, with Drew and Jesse? It’s killing me that I can’t remember.