<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/taylor-swift">Taylor Swift</a> is distantly related to famed 19th-century <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/poetry">poet</a> Emily Dickinson, per a Today Show <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/taylor-swift-emily-dickinson-related-rcna141604">report</a>.
Genealogy company Ancestry did the research and concluded that Swift, 34, and Dickinson are sixth cousins three times removed. Dickinson died in 1886 at the age of 55.
“Swift and Dickinson both descend from a 17th century English immigrant (Swift’s 9th great-grandfather and Dickinson’s 6th great-grandfather who was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut),” a rep from Ancestry told the outlet.
“Taylor Swift’s ancestors remained in Connecticut for six generations until her part of the family eventually settled in northwestern Pennsylvania, where they married into the Swift family line,” the statement continued.
Swift’s upcoming <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/entertainment">album</a> is called “The Tortured Poets Department.” She announced it would drop on April 19 after accepting the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album in February. “All’s fair in love and poetry&#8230;” her Instagram caption at the time said.
“And so I enter into evidence / My tarnished coat of arms / My muses, acquired like bruises / My talismans and charms / The tick, tick, tick of love bombs / My veins of pitch black ink,” it said on an image of what appeared to be handwritten lyrics posted after the album cover.
Fans have been obsessed with the “Lavender Haze” composer’s lyrical prowess, which led to comparisons to famous poets, including Dickinson.
The Grammy Award-winner even referenced Dickinson herself in 2022 while accepting the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade award from the Nashville Songwriters Association International. At the time, Swift said, “If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson’s great-grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that’s me writing in the quill genre.”
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Followers also noticed that Swift released her album “Evermore” on December 10, 2020, which is Dickinson’s birthday. They further connected some of the lyrics to the late poet, including noticing that the Dickinson poem &#8220;One Sister Have I in Our House” includes the word “evermore.”
Dickinson lived most of her life in isolation and wrote nearly 1,800 poems during that time. She achieved international fame only after her death when her younger sister found all the writings and had them published.

Swift and Dickinson

Taylor Swift Is Distant Cousin Of Poet Emily Dickinson, Genealogy Company Finds

Celebrities

Entertainment

Poetry

Taylor Swift

U.S.

Actress <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/megan-fox">Megan Fox</a> announced that she’d be releasing a book of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/poetry">poetry</a> that was inspired by her feelings about men.
The 37-year-old <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/celebrities">star</a> just announced the November <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/entertainment">release</a> of “Pretty Boys Are Poisonous,&#8221; a collection of poems about her personal life experiences.
“These poems were written in an attempt to excise the illness that had taken root in me because of my silence. I’ve spent my entire life keeping the secrets of men, my body aches from carrying the weight of their sin,” Fox said in a <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Pretty-Boys-Are-Poisonous/Megan-Fox/9781668050415">statement</a> about the project. 
“My freedom lives in these pages, and I hope that my words can inspire others to take back their happiness and their identity by using their voice to illuminate what’s been buried, but not forgotten, in the darkness,” she continued. 
The actress also shared the news on social media with a photo posted on Instagram showing the cover. The caption said, &#8220;I wrote a book,&#8221; and announced the November 7 release date.
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Fox&#8217;s fiancé, rapper Machine Gun Kelly, added a comment that said, &#8220;proud of you&#8221; with a fire emoji. 
The book is being released by Gallery Books, a division of Simon &amp; Schuster. They wrote in the description, “Megan Fox showcases her wicked humor throughout a heartbreaking and dark collection of poetry. Over the course of more than seventy poems Fox chronicles all the ways in which we fit ourselves into the shape of the ones we love, even if it means losing ourselves in the process.”
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The publisher further described the project, saying it “marks the powerful debut from one of the most well-known women of our time. Turn the page, bite the apple, and sink your teeth into the most deliciously compelling and addictive books you’ll read all year.”
Fox and Machine Gun Kelly, whose real name is Colson Baker, have been engaged since 2022. The couple were battling breakup rumors earlier this year amid allegations that MGK cheated on Fox. Previously, the actress was married to actor Brian Austin Green, with whom she shares three children.

Megan Fox

Megan Fox Announces ‘Dark’ Poetry Book Detailing How She’s Been ‘Keeping The Secrets Of Men’

Megan Fox Announces 'Dark' Poetry Book Detailing How She's Been 'Keeping The Secrets Of Men'

A poet&#8217;s job is to point to the moon and transport souls beyond the human dimension. But can poetry bloom under the reign of woke culture? Or is this ancient art destined to become a political tool in the service of woke culture and male-phobic feminism? 
As founder of an international movement like Poetry Renaissance, traveling the world to create spaces of free expression for poetry, I want to put in my two cents.
If we look at contemporary poetry in the West, especially in America, we see that in recent years the presence of woke and feminist themes have become very invasive. The method of this very powerful ideology is always the same: enter the circuit, impose your value, cancel all others. And it works.
Competitions, events, and publishing houses have clearly started to favor poetry of a certain political flavor.
Many (not all yet, fortunately) of the poets laureate who are chosen by public institutions have started, often openly, to smell woke.
And so, little by little, poets disappear to be replaced by conscious or unaware woke activists. It almost seems that you can no longer make poetry if you are not a woke activist. And one does not necessarily have to write a poem about &#8220;God,&#8221; &#8220;Homeland,&#8221; and &#8220;Family&#8221; to be excluded from many poetic circuits. Just don’t write about what they want to impose and you are not welcome.
&#8220;Feminist poetry&#8221; flourishes as a genre in its own right, as if it made sense to divide poetry on the basis of ideology. If you are not a feminist today it is very difficult to find a proper space in universities, festivals, poetic institutions. And especially among the major publishers.
While, ironically, the most famous American poet abroad remains Charles Bukowski.
I don&#8217;t want to be misunderstood, however. I am not advocating for woke and feminist themes to disappear in poetry. It would be nice, though, if they don&#8217;t become the only ones.
So the American poetic tradition — the same that gave birth to Walt Whitman and Robert Frost — ended up proposing to the world an inexplicable phenomenon like Amanda Gorman. Unfortunately, I am not an American, and observing this process from the outside, I assure you, I find it even more worrying.
Let’s be clear, political poetry has always had a place in the world of poets. History shows us this very evidently: Horace, Dante, William Wordsworth &#8230; many of the great poets also had a political side. Today, in this period, America is pervaded by the politicization of everything, so it’s not strange that there’s a lot of political poetry in America.
But to make poetry you need a variety of colors. Instead, the current political world is black and white.
As the poet laureate Tracy K. Smith said: &#8220;Issues are polarizing and you fall into a camp, [but] poetry doesn’t allow that to happen.&#8221; And I hope that quoting her in this post is not enough to get her canceled as I will be.
Because in their black-and-white world, everything that’s not the color that they want gets canceled. You’re either feminist and woke, or you’re misogynistic, racist, and homophobic and so you need to be canceled.
And this way of thinking is exactly the opposite of poetry, that tries to embrace the whole and the unity of things.
For a poet, the main problem of wokeness and feminism is that they censor any word that undermines the foundations of their ideology. Poetry is based on the flight of the word. If the word is not free, poetry cannot fly.
Also, poetry should not speak to one group while ignoring  another. Poetry has the exact opposite effect, it should break down the walls of humanity to become universal. Walt Whitman is a great poet not because he was an American patriot, but because he spoke to the whole world from his American experience. 
So this wave that is invading the delicate universe of poetry filters the world through political categories and ends up labeling every person through that dimension. 
But a poet, an artist, is precisely one who uses art to escape from simplistic social logic. I find it difficult to define myself politically, so much so that when I am forced to say I define myself as &#8220;anarcho-monarchist,&#8221; just like Tolkien. After all, we do not remember Lord Byron for his defense of the Luddite movement, we remember him in the words of Don Juan.
Certainly, in the conservative arena, there does not seem to be much interest in the flourishing of poetry. 
For example, since Robert Frost was selected by John F. Kennedy as the first presidential inaugural poet, there have been six other inaugural poets selected by four presidents, all of whom have been Democrats, while Republicans never chose an inaugural poet. This is certainly a mistake that only strengthens the woke agenda.
However, it is not Republican poets that can save poetry from wokeness — but free poets. Poets who know that there is something above all ideological and political divisions. And that “something” is what real Poetry deals with.
Poetry should not walk on human paths, but fly in the dimension of the soul. Poetry is a mystical matter, &#8220;mysticism for beginners&#8221; as Adam Zagajewski would say. This was expressed very well by poet laureate Charles Wright: &#8220;I believe in the mystery of things, and I believe the poet’s job is to try to corral that mystery.&#8221; I still hope that he will not be canceled for being unknowingly quoted in this post.
The good news is that poetry is flourishing around the world again. Thanks to social networks anyone who has verses in their heart can respond to the invitation of Walt Whitman &#8220;and you may contribute a verse.&#8221; My experience with Poetry Renaissance, with all its readings, contests, free activities, shows me that there is no better flourishing for poetry than in freedom of expression. 
That is what is so badly needed: freedom, a value that once made America known in the world, but today seems obscured in the prevailing woke agenda.
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<a href="http://www.paologambi.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paolo Gambi</a> is an Italian multimedia artist, poet, and a contributor to “Il Giornale,” Italy’s primary conservative newspaper. He is the founder of Poetry Renaissance, one of the main networks of poetry in Italy, present in various countries. He has published more than thirty books. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

William Shakespeare

In Honor Of World Poetry Day, Let’s Take Back What The Woke Have Stolen

In Honor Of World Poetry Day, Let's Take Back What The Woke Have Stolen

English

Italy

Readers Pass

Shakespeare

Woke Culture

World

Heated political rhetoric — and growing concerns about political violence — have fueled warning after warning that the United States might be headed for another Civil War.
An <a href="https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/08/24/politics-elections-economist-yougov-poll-august-20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">August 2022 poll</a> from The Economist/YouGov revealed that everyday Americans worry that the country is too divided to course-correct. <a href="https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2022/9/1/23328699/is-a-second-civil-war-likely-in-america" target="_blank" rel="noopener">According to that poll</a>, 42% (half of Republicans and 39% of Democrats) believe a second civil war is at least &#8220;somewhat likely&#8221; within the next decade. A decisive majority — 68% — believes that political violence will increase, and 86% believe that political divides have only deepened since early 2021.
The Brookings Institute published a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/09/16/is-the-us-headed-for-another-civil-war/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">piece</a> in September of 2021 that outlined some of the reasons another civil war might be inevitable. Not the least of these was the sincere belief — held by most Americans, regardless of their political persuasion — that the &#8220;other side&#8221; was not going to play fair. Competing accusations of &#8220;<a href="https://dailywire.com/news/democrats-georgias-record-voter-turnout-is-actually-voter-suppression/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">voter suppression</a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href="https://dailywire.com/news/ben-shapiro-twitter-files-show-2020-was-rigged-not-stolen-but-trump-is-hurting-himself/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stolen elections</a>&#8221; only serve to bolster those beliefs.
And there are some who believe a new civil war is already underway — albeit a &#8220;cold&#8221; civil war absent the body count of its &#8220;hot&#8221; counterpart. Claremont Review of Books editor Charles R. Kesler <a href="https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/americas-cold-civil-war/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">outlined</a> just such a &#8220;cold&#8221; civil war, describing it as a battle between two constitutions.
&#8220;Underlying our cold civil war is the fact that America is torn increasingly between two rival constitutions, two cultures, two ways of life,&#8221; he said during a 2018 lecture at Hillsdale College.
One faction, he explained, accepted the U.S. Constitution as written and amended. The other argued that the Constitution must constantly be reimagined in order to ensure that it meets the needs of a changing culture. The &#8220;living Constitution&#8221; they advocate &#8220;implies that the original Constitution is dead — or at least on life support — and that in order to remain relevant to our national life, the original Constitution must be infused with new meaning and new ends and therefore with new duties, rights, and powers. To cite an important example, new administrative agencies must be created to circumvent the structural limitations that the original Constitution imposed on government.&#8221;
But the fundamental problem with a second civil war in the United States — particularly one that splits Americans along ideological lines — is that there is no east-to-west or north-to-south Mason-Dixon Line along which to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/01/11/1071082955/imagine-another-american-civil-war-but-this-time-in-every-state" target="_blank" rel="noopener">divide the country</a>. Rather, there are tiny, fragmented lines that will divide states, counties, and even individual households.
&#8220;We&#8217;re less a nation divided into 50 states than we are two nations that are both present in each of those states. Each is dominant in its own space and certain that it is the real America,&#8221; NPR&#8217;s Ron Elving wrote in January of 2022.
&#8220;The forces of disunity are disquieting, to say the least. But must it all come to blows? Can we still center ourselves and pull back from whatever brink we are approaching?&#8221; he asked — and ultimately left the question unanswered.
Time Magazine&#8217;s Peter Coleman <a href="https://time.com/6222633/second-civil-war-us-how-to-avoid/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">offered hope</a> in a piece published in October, saying that the only way to truly lower the temperature and find common ground was for Americans — whether they be politicians and pundits or simply neighbors — to stop talking past each other and start listening to each other. He explained that when he tried this himself with a neighbor who had differing political views, he was surprised to learn first that they actually agreed on more things than he had expected, and second, that his own faulty assumptions about what &#8220;the other side&#8221; believed had been a part of the problem.
Another ray of hope as Christmas approaches comes from the <a href="https://poets.org/poem/christmas-bells" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1864 poem</a> written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, penned as the nation around him was quite literally being torn to pieces: state versus state; brother versus brother.
The first stanzas of &#8220;Christmas Bells&#8221; reflect on the Biblical promise of the Christmas angels, who had come to earth to herald the birth of Jesus and deliver a message of &#8220;peace on earth, good will to men.&#8221; He explains that, after many hundreds of years of the church bells repeating that message, it should have resonated with all of humanity.
<blockquote>I heard the bells on Christmas Day 
Their old, familiar carols play, 
    And wild and sweet 
    The words repeat 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come, 
The belfries of all Christendom 
    Had rolled along 
    The unbroken song 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way, 
The world revolved from night to day, 
    A voice, a chime, 
    A chant sublime 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!</blockquote>
Longfellow turned back then to his present day and the war that threatened to consume a nation — and lamented the feeling that the Christmas message was being choked out by the hatred that drove the war to continue. His own <a href="https://www.nps.gov/long/learn/historyculture/christmas-bells.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">personal connection</a> to the war intensified when his son Charley ran away to join the Union Army in 1863 — he was later wounded during the Mine Run campaign.
<blockquote>Then from each black, accursed mouth 
The cannon thundered in the South, 
    And with the sound 
    The carols drowned 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men! 
It was as if an earthquake rent 
The hearth-stones of a continent, 
    And made forlorn 
    The households born 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head; 
&#8220;There is no peace on earth,&#8221; I said; 
    &#8220;For hate is strong, 
    And mocks the song 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!&#8221;</blockquote>
But Longfellow held out hope, even in a nation that was already torn asunder — and concluded with the fact that the message of Christmas was still there: the church bells were still faithfully ringing their message, and the people had only to listen to it.
<blockquote>Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: 
&#8220;God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; 
    The Wrong shall fail, 
    The Right prevail, 
With peace on earth, good-will to men.&#8221;</blockquote>

Christmas Bells

‘Christmas Bells’: 1864 Poem Offers Hope Amid Fears Of Another Civil War

'Christmas Bells': 1864 Poem Offers Hope Amid Fears Of Another Civil War

American Civil War

Civil War

Amanda Gorman, who read a poem at President Joe Biden’s inauguration and was feted as the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017, decided to rewrite the words of the national anthem for July 4, calling the American flag the “scar-mangled banner.”
Gorman stated in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/opinion/amanda-gorman-poem-inauguration.html">The New York Times</a> that she had been “terrified on a physical level” about performing at Biden’s inaugural, saying, “I did  know at the inauguration I was going to become highly visible — which is a very dangerous thing to be in America, especially if you’re Black and outspoken and have no Secret Service.”
On Monday, she published her version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which read:
<blockquote>O say can we see, by the Gone’s early flight, What so loudly we failed at the mornlight’s past gleaming, Whose flawed stripes and strifed scars, through the perilous plight, Our wan hearts, we watched, stirred and valiantly screaming.
And the rifle’s dread glare, bullets bursting in air, Gave truth in our sight that our flag was not spared. O say does that scar-mangled banner yet save Our land of the free and the home of the brave?</blockquote>
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(2/2) And the rifle’s dread glare, bullets bursting in air, Gave truth in our sight that our flag was not spared. O say does that scar-mangled banner yet save Our land of the free and the home of the brave?
&mdash; Amanda Gorman (@TheAmandaGorman) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheAmandaGorman/status/1544163633655005185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 5, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Congrats to Weird Al for his work as Youth Poet Laureate <a href="https://t.co/jTdYCRDlbx">https://t.co/jTdYCRDlbx</a>
&mdash; Timothy H.J. Nerozzi 庭夢 (@TimothyNerozzi) <a href="https://twitter.com/TimothyNerozzi/status/1544328043225030656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 5, 2022</a></blockquote>
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The national anthem has come under fierce criticism from members of the Left for some time; in the midst of the 2020 riots, author Daniel E. Walker posited, “I do side with the people who say that we should rethink this as the national anthem, because this is about the deep-seated legacy of slavery and white supremacy in America, where we do things over and over and over again that are a slap in the face of people of color and women.”
Activist Kevin Powell suggested replacing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with John Lennon’s “Imagine,” as <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/why-it-might-be-time-to-replace-the-star-spangled-banner-with-a-new-national-anthem-023741108.html">Yahoo</a> reported at the time: “Powell, for his part, suggests John Lennon’s Imagine, which he says is ‘the most beautiful, unifying, all-people, all-backgrounds-together kind of song you could have.’”
“I grew up in hip-hop,” Powell added, “and I remember how people would criticize hip-hop for being violent. Yet ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is riddled with violence. How are you criticizing a rap song for being violent, but when we get to kindergarten, we are literally teaching children violence through song? I said, ‘I can&#8217;t participate anymore.’ So I stopped a long time ago.”

Los Angeles Times Festival Of Books

‘Scar-Mangled Banner’: Biden’s Inaugural Poet Rewrites National Anthem For July 4

Amanda Gorman

National Anthem