An actual poet has thanked Taylor Swift for dropping her name next to another famed wordsmith on a track on her new album, The Tortured Poets Department.
Singer/songwriter and poet Patti Smith took to Instagram over the weekend to shoutout she was honored to be mentioned in the album's title track. She's featured in the lyric, "You're not Dylan Thomas. I'm not Patti Smith. This ain't the Chelsea Hotel. We're modern idiots."
The "Because the Night" singer took to Instagram, posting a pair of black-and-white photos of herself reading a book titled, Dylan Thomas: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.
She also captioned the photo with words in poetic form:
"This is
saying I was
moved to be
mentioned in
the company
of the great
Welsh poet
Dylan Thomas.
Thank you Taylor.
@taylorswift."
Smith has published several books of nonfiction and poetry including Witt (1973), Babel (1978), Woolgathering (1992), Auguries of Innocence (2005), Just Kids (2010), The Coral Sea (2012), Collected Lyrics, 1970-2015 (2015), M Train (2015), Devotion (2017), and Year of the Monkey (2019) and A Book of Days (2022).
Her literary honors include the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize as well as PEN/Audible Literary Service Award in 2020.
The "Godmother of Punk" has also made a music career existing mostly outside of the mainstream. Smith scored a hit with "Because the Night," a song originally written by Bruce Springsteen with additional lyrics she added, in 1978 when it reached No. 13 on Billboard's Hot 100.
Yet, her influence has been huge. R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe has said, "She was the mentor who made R.E.M. a band in the first place." She was also featured on the band's 1996 song "E-Bow the Letter."
U2 has also acknowledged a debt to Smith by covering her 1979 song "Dancing Barefoot" as a B-side in 1989.
Smith began her music career performing poetry. She made her first public appearance reciting poetry accompanied by Lenny Kaye on guitar in February 1971. Two years later they formed the Patti Smith Group.
