poet of poem wandering singers

Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu – Summary, Analysis and Questions and Answers

Table of Contents

Central Idea Of The Poem

The poem is about the wandering singers who engage their entire life in singing for others pleasure and never minds about his pleasure. The poet Sarojini Naidu is a great poet to paint the life of wandering singers in poetic words.

The poem “Wandering Singers” by Sarojini Naidu is about the band of folk singers wandering through their singing from town to town and from village to village to spread the message of love. They play the lute; as they wander from place to place, they play a musical instrument. The wind’s voice symbolises the welcoming tone of the song echoing through the streets and forests. All mankind, to the wandering singers, is like their extended family and their home is the world.

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The theme of the songs they sing goes back to ancient battle stories or ancient kings. They also have songs about women’s beauty and about things happy and sad. The wandering singers do not have their own dreams or hopes; they go wherever the wind calls them. No love can make them go slow, or they cannot be asked to wait with no joy. The wind’s voice is the voice of their lives and their destiny as well.

About the poet

Sarojini Naidu was an Indian political activist and poet. She was an important figure in India’s struggle for independence from colonial rule. Naidu’s work as a poet earned her the sobriquet Nightingale of India.

1. lutes – a lute is a kind of musical instrument with strings

2. kindred – family or relatives

3. lays – (old usage) songs

4. cities whose lustre is shed – cities which were once great and famous, but not anymore

They count the world as their home and all the people around their innate family and their relatives. They hold lutes in their hands, and they always sing about the city sheen and the past.

Their songs radiate the laughter and beauty of the women of the past, the legends of the sword and the old battles, and the crowns of the old kings.

Analysis of Wandering Singers

Wandering Singers is a lyric developed in three stanzas of four aa, bb, cc, ddd, ee, ff. In the first stanza wandering singers sing the song. The voice of the wind calls the wandering feet of singers through echoing forest and street with lutes in hands and singing the songs. All men are their relatives and the whole world is their home.

They sing about the cities lustre who is lost, laughter and beauty of woman who is dead, sword of old battles and crowns of old kings. They just depend upon their fate. There is no love that compares them to sit in a particular place and no joy can allow them to wait. The voice of wind is the voice of their fate.

‘Wandering Singers’ is a lyric song, in the very tune of the songs of the wandering singers in India. The main theme of the poem is philosophical attitude towards death, life, birth, love, sorrow, passion. The wandering singers sing of past and present and its glory and greatness. The ‘Wandering Singers’ sing about the community life, who wander from one place to another place like wind.

They always keep on singing and wandering ‘walls’ with their musical instruments in their hands, i.e. national, provincial, racial, caste, etc. biases do not separate them from their fellowmen. They regard all men as their brothers and the whole world as their home. In their outlook, they are cosmopolitan. They are believers in the unity of all men. They are world brotherhood voters. They are votaries of world brotherhood.

Their themes can be appreciated by all. They sing of cities which have lost the glory which they once enjoyed, for example, cities like Chittor or Golconda. They sing of women who have been dead for a long time, such as Jhansi ki Rani or Zeb-ul Nissa. They sing of battles which were fought in the past and of kings and warriors who fought those battles. They are these repositories of custom and tradition who keep alive a local and traditional legend and communicate it to the people. They thus perform a very useful social function, for it is they who make the common men conscious of their cultural heritage, of the glory and greatness of their past. Through their songs, they assert the cultural and historical continuity of the legacy of the past. Their themes are simple; sometimes they are happy and at other times sorrowful.

The wandering singers have no dream of the future and they have nothing to hope for in this respect they are like Shelley’s skylark which does not ‘look before and after and pine for what is not.’ Just as the skylark keeps on flying higher and higher, so also they wander on and on without any hopes and dreams. They live entirely in the present without any regrets for the past or hopes for the future. The urge to wander is strong in them and they are more along in obedience to the call of the wind. They have no objects of love relation, friends, wives etc. Hence, they do not stop but wander along singing continuously like so many singing birds. They follow only the path of wind. The society of the wandering singers is an absolutely free society, as free as is possible under the limitations imposed on us by our human condition.

In the ‘face of modernity’, Naidu affirms the Indian identity through wandering singers. Wandering singers belong to the cultural heritage of India and Naidu is not ready to lose this Indian tradition under the threat of modernity.

The poem rightly reveals the search for cultural identity of the Indians. It gives expression to the distinct Indian folk personality, in order to reintegrate the Indians with their rich cultural heritage.

A. Answer these questions

1. What is the song Wandering Singers about? Ans. The song is about a band of folk singers who wander from city to city and from village to village to spread the message of love through their singing. They play the lute; as they roam from place to place, they are a musical instrument.

2. Do the singers stay at one place or do they wander about? What determines where they go? Ans. They wander about from one place to the other. The call of the wind determines where they go.

3. What do the singers sing about? Ans. The Wandering Singers’ song is about tales of ancient battles or of ancient kings. They also have songs about women’s beauty as well as happy and sad things. All mankind is like their extended family and their home is the world.

4. How do the singers sing? Ans. The singers sing songs with lutes in their hands and travelling from place to place.

5. Are the singers homeless travellers? Why do you think so? Ans. No, the singers are not homeless. They think that the world is their home and people are their brothers and sisters.

6. What do the singers sing about? Ans. They sing about the stories of the cities whose beauty has long passed away; the women’s happiness and beauty that was robbed either by the wars or by the time. They sing about ancient battles as well or about old kings. They have songs about life’s simple, happy and sad things, too.

7. What has happened to the cities? Ans. It has been ravished by wars, famine etc., so, the beauty has gone.

8. What does, “The laughter and beauty of women long-dead” mean? Ans. The laughter and beauty have died because of wars or because of famine.

9. What songs do the singers sing of the sword of old battles? Ans. They sing about the brave warriors who fought bravely with the sword.

10.Why do the singers feel nostalgic of the crown of old kings? Ans. They feel nostalgic because, during the kings’ period, these singers used to get rewards which made them lead a comfortable life.

Reference to context

1. “What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?” Explain these lines. Ans: The poet tells us that because of their wandering nature, wandering singers can not have any hope or dream of a bright future.

B. Extra Questions and Answers

Q.1. Which line tells us that the singers sing as they travel?

Ans. ‘with lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam’

Q.2. The wandering singers have no permanent homes and families. Do they show any sadness about it? Or do they have a different notion of family and home?

Ans. Although the wandering singers do not have any permanent home or family, they do not show any sadness about it. In the line ‘All men are kindred, the world is our home,’ the wandering singers tell us that they consider everyone their family and the whole world their home. So they feel a bond with everyone and at home anywhere and everywhere.

Q.3. What do the wandering singers sing about? What might their listeners get from their songs in terms of –

(a) Knowledge (b) Mood?

Ans. The wandering singers sing about cities which were once great and famous, about the laughter and beauty of women who died long ago, old battles and kings of past, happy, simple and sad things.

(a) In terms of knowledge, listeners can learn something of history and folklore from the wandering singers ‘songs, as they sing of cities, battles, women and kings from the past.

(b) In terms of mood, the listeners can feel fascination, curiosity, admiration, sadness and excitement as they hear about cities that used to be grand, women who were happy and beautiful, battles that were bravely fought and kings who were great, but none of whom exist anymore.

Q.4. Why do the wandering singers not wait anywhere? Why do they keep travelling?

Ans. The wandering singers do not wait anywhere because no close ties or loving relationships make them stay at any particular place. Their happiness is not associated with a particular place where they might want to wait. Instead, the wind as it moves freely from one place to another, calling out to them to travel to one place one day and another place the next day. Their destinations keep changing, like the wind. So they keep moving from one place to another.

Appreciating the poem

Q.1. Why do you think the speaker uses, the words, ‘wander’ and ‘roam’ and not ‘march’?

Ans. The words ‘wander’ and ‘roam’ mean walk or move in a relaxed, unhurried manner, with no fixed purpose. The words ‘march’ and ‘stride’ mean to walk quickly with a purpose in a specific direction. The first two words have been used instead of the others because the wandering singers are never in a hurry, they have no fixed destination or place to reach. They move in a relaxed pace, going wherever they feel like going, free to change direction as often as the wind.

Q. 2. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem?

Ans. The rhyme scheme of this poem is aa bb cc dd ee ff.

Q. Write a summary of Wandering Singers .

The Wandering Singers have no fixed abode. They are forever on the road, led to ever new places by the voice of the wind. Whether they are travelling through streets or forests, the places echo with their songs. These songs have many themes: cities that were once glorious but no more; happy and beautiful women who died a long time ago; old battles and old kings. As can be seen, all these themes have something pleasant-beauty, happiness, glory or bravery- and something sad about them- they belong to the past.

The wandering singers have no family and no home, but they consider everyone their family and the whole world their home. They do not dream and plan the way other people do, for their lives do not follow a fixed, regular pattern, their destiny is as changeable as the changing direction of the wind. They are not held back by love or happiness, yet they love their wandering lifestyle and are happy to keep travelling forever.

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Wandering Singers

Back to: Sarojini Naidu Poems

Table of Contents

Introduction

The poem Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu is about a group of people who keep wandering from villages to towns and from towns to forests. While on the way, they keep singing.

According to the poet, these wandering singers do not have any hopes or desires. They go where the wind goes. In other words, they seem to either nomads or some nature lovers who are Romantic and do not have any love for materialistic things. Instead, they love following the nature.

In the first stanza, the wandering singers say that they roam where the voice of the wind calls their feet . The word wind is symbolic here. It perhaps refer to changing seasons or even the changing times. Calling the wandering feet means asking them to accompany it (the wind). In other words, they wander wherever the wind goes.

The wandering singers travel through the echoing forest and the echoing street with lutes in their hands and always keep singing . Here, echoing forest mean the villages which are full of hustle and bustle. Similarly, echoing street refers to the cities which are again full of life.

According to the wandering singer, all the humans on earth are their family and the whole world is their home. In other words, they do not have a family of their own or even a home. They rather consider themselves to be the citizen of the world.

In this stanza, the wandering singers tell us what they exactly sing about. According to them, their lays (songs) are of cities whose lustre i.e. glory is shed i.e. gone. They also sing of laughter and beauty (i.e. cheerful life) of women who died long ago.

They sing of sword of old battles (i.e. wars and battles) and also the crown of the old kings (i.e. kings, their rule and their time). And also, they sing of happy (joyful), simple and even sorrowful things which means they sing of past as well as of present. They sing of those who are gone long ago and also of the present.

The wandering singers then raise a rhetorical question. They wonder what hope and dreams they should have. Hope and dreams are for those who think of achieving something (worldly things). But they (wandering singers) do not have any desire. Hence they do not have dreams.

They go wherever the wind goes. No love bids them tarry i.e. the love never leaves them. They always feel loved by the nature. And no joy bids them wait i.e. the joy never makes them for it. They always enjoy because the voice of the wind is the voice of their fate i.e. the fate of the wind is their fate as well.

Read important questions and answers of this poem.

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Analysis of Wandering Singers

Sarojini naidu 1879 (hyderabad) – 1949 (lucknow).

WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things. What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu, born as Sarojini Chattopadhyay also known by the sobriquet as The Nightingale of India, was a child prodigy, Indian independence activist and poet. Naidu served as the first governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949; the first woman to become the governor of an Indian state. She was the second woman to become the president of the Indian National Congress in 1925 and the first Indian woman to do so. more…

All Sarojini Naidu poems | Sarojini Naidu Books

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Sarojini Naidu

Wandering singers, other works by sarojini naidu....

O little mouse, why dost thou cry While merry stars laugh in the sky… Alas! alas! my lord is dead! Ah, who will ease my bitter pain? He went to seek a millet—grain

LAMP of my life, the lips of Dea… Hath blown thee out with their sud… Naught shall revive thy vanished s… Love, must I dwell in the living… Tree of my life, Death’s cruel fo…

In childhood’s pride I said to Th… 'O Thou, who mad’st me of Thy bre… Speak, Master, and reveal to me Thine inmost laws of life and deat… 'Give me to drink each joy and pai…

HONEY, child, honey, child, whit… Would you cast your jewels all to… Would you leave the mother who on… Would you grieve the lover who is… Mother mine, to the wild forest I…

Like a joy on the heart of a sorro… The sunset hangs on a cloud; A golden storm of glittering sheav… Of fair and frail and fluttering l… The wild wind blows in a cloud.

Men say the world is full of fear… And all life’s ripening harvest—fi… The restless sickle of relentless… But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that… When from the climbing terraces of…

Cover mine eyes, O my Love! Mine eyes that are weary of bliss As of light that is poignant and s… O silence my lips with a kiss, My lips that are weary of song!

DEIGN, Prince, my tribute to re… This lyric offering to your name, Who round your jewelled scepter bi… The lilies of a poet’s fame; Beneath whose sway concordant dwel…

Jaya Surya GOLDEN sun of victory, born In my life’s unclouded morn, In my lambent sky of love, May your growing glory prove

Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening… The wind lies asleep in the arms o… Come, let us gather our nets from… To capture the leaping wealth of t… No longer delay, let us hasten awa…

O YOUNG through all thy immemor… Rise, Mother, rise, regenerate fr… And, like a bride high—mated with… Beget new glories from thine agele… The nations that in fettered darkn…

EYES ravished with rapture, cele… Drink deep of the hush of the hyac… O wild and entrancing the strain o… And beautiful dancers with houri—l… The scents of red roses and sandal…

The new hath come and now the old… And so the past becomes a mountain… Where lone, apart, old hermit—memo… In consecrated calm, forgotten yet Of the keen heart that hastens to…

UNWILLING priestess in thy cru… Long hast thou held me, pitiless g… Bound to thy worship by reluctant… My tired breast girt with sufferin… Anointed with perpetual weariness.

Beloved, you may be as all men say Only a transient spark Of flickering flame set in loam of… I care not …since you kindle all m… With the immortal lustres of the d…

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Wandering Singers

Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home.

Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things.

What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

– Sarojini Naidu

– Sarojini Naidu Poems

Corn Grinders
Cradle Song
Harvest Hymn
Humayan To Zobeida
Song Of A Dream
Street Cries
The Snake Charmer
To A Buddha Seated On A Lotus
To The God Of Pain
Village Song

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Exclusive children’s edutainment magazine, wandering singers – by sarojini naidu.

Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing, we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things. What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

Sarojini Naidu, the poet, freedom fighter and patriot was also known by the sobriquet The Nightingale of India. She was a sensitive poet and wrote poetry based on the beauty of simple joys and sorrows of life. Her poetry included children’s poems, nature poems, poems on love and death etc. Sarojini Naidu is a poet of Indian thought and culture and her poems described Indian flora and fauna, Indian customs and traditions, festivals, men, and women, places legends of kings and queens etc.

The poem “Wandering Singers” by Sarojini Naidu is about a band of folk singers who wander from town to town and from village to village to spread the message of love through their singing. They play the flute; a musical instrument as they roam from place to place. The voice of the wind symbolizes the welcoming tone of the song that echoes through the forests and streets. To the wandering singers, all mankind are like their extended family and the world is their home. The theme of the songs that they sing goes back to stories of ancient battles or of old kings. They also have songs about the beauty of women and about happy and sad things.

The wandering singers have no dreams or hopes of their own; they go wherever the wind calls them. No love can make them go slow or no joy can make them wait. The voice of the wind is the voice of their life and also their destiny.

Courtesy: Beaming Notes, Cultural India

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Sarojini Naidu | Wandering Singers | An Analytical Study

Sarojini Naidu’s Poem ‘Wandering Singers’-An Analytical Study

The poem “Wandering Singers” by Sarojini Naidu portrays a group of wandering singers who travel freely wherever the wind calls them.

The main theme of the poem is the nomadic nature of the wandering singers and their connection to the world around them. The poem celebrates their itinerant lifestyle, emphasizing their sense of belonging to a larger human family. It also highlights the transient nature of life and the acceptance of fate.

The poem mentions the subjects of their songs, which include cities that have lost their former splendor, the beauty of women from the past, the glory of ancient battles, the crowns of kings, and a mix of happy, simple, and sorrowful things. This imagery suggests that the singers draw inspiration from a wide range of experiences and emotions.

The wandering singers are portrayed as free spirits who don’t stay in one place. They are driven by the voice of the wind, and no love or joy compels them to stay or wait. The wind’s voice is presented as their fate, guiding their footsteps and shaping their journeys.

The poet uses vivid and evocative language to convey the essence of the wandering singers’ existence. The wind is personified as it calls out to their wandering feet, leading them through forests and streets. The singers carry lutes and sing as they roam, considering all people as their kindred and the world as their home.

To say in brief, “Wandering Singers” celebrates the nomadic life of the singers and their connection to humanity. The poem explores the idea of embracing fate and finding inspiration in a variety of experiences. It encourages a sense of openness to the world and the ever-changing path that lies ahead. 0 0 0 .

Sarojini Naidu Wandering Singers An Analytical Study

N.B. The article ‘Sarojini Naidu Wandering Singers An Analytical Study’ originally belongs to the book ‘ Analytical Studies of Selected Poems of Sarojini Naidu ‘ by Menonim Menonimus.

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Wandering Singers

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WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things. What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

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Summary of Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu, the poet, freedom fighter and a patriot was also known by the sobriquet The Nightingale of India. She was a sensitive poet and wrote poetry based on the beauty of simple joys and sorrows of life. Her poetry included children’s poems, nature poems, poems on love and death etc. Sarojini Naidu is a poet of Indian thought and culture and her poems described Indian flora and fauna, Indian customs and traditions, festivals, men and women, places legends of kings and queens etc.

The poem “Wandering Singers” by Sarojini Naidu is about the band of folk singers who wander from town to town and from village to village to spread the message of love through their singing. They play the lute; a musical instrument as they roam from place to place. The voice of the wind symbolizes the welcoming tone of the song that echoes through the forests and streets. To the wandering singers, all mankind are like their extended family and the world is their home. The theme of the songs that they sing goes back to stories of ancient battles or of old kings. They also have songs about the beauty of women and about happy and sad things . The wandering singers have no dreams or hopes of their own; they go wherever the wind calls them. No love can make them go slow or no joy can bade them to wait. The voice of the wind is the voice of their life and also their destiny.

Meanings: kindred:extended family/ people of own blood lays: songs lustre: glory bids us: asks us to tarry: go slow

Choose the correct answer from the options:

1. What do the singers sing about? a. animals and birds b. culture and rituals c. beauty of women and simple and sorrowful things d. songs of God and Goddesses

2. Pick out the phrase that tell us about the singers a. consider all the human beings as one b. complaining about life c. sing about the birds and animals d. roam about freely

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Wow it is very useful

it was really amazing and it was very usefull

really useful !!!!!!!!!

Nice summary but you should have included the rhyme scheme also.

Really help me to understand the poet. Thanks

?This is very very useful for me in my final exam

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Wandering Singers

Sarojini naidu.

Turn, O Libertad ( Walt Whitman )
Not all the singers of a thousand years ( Lord Alfred Douglas )
Singers to Come ( Alice Meynell )
The Green Singer ( John Shaw Neilson )
The Indications ( Walt Whitman )
We Are Coming, Sister Mary ( Henry Clay Work )
Romulus and Remus ( Rudyard Kipling )
Oppression ( Langston Hughes )

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Just read "Wandering Singers" and wow, what a journey! The emotion behind every line really resonated with me. This poem speaks to the traveler in all of us, the longing for both the thrill of new experiences yet a connection to something familiar too. “The world is our home” is such a powerful phrase. Beautifully written!

LOVE THIS POEM BY SAROJINI NAIDU!!! REALLY RESONATES WITH MY WANDERLUST HEART. IT'S LIKE SHE'S PAINTING A BEAUTIFUL PICTURE WITH WORDS. SO POWERFUL AND DEEP. REALLY MAKES YOU THINK ABT THINGS DIFFERENTLY. KUDOS TO THE POET. LIFE IS A JOURNEY INDEED!

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Poem Wandering Singers: Summary and Critical Appreciation

Introduction of the poem:.

The poem "Wandering Singers" has been extracted from the volume entitled "The Golden Threshold". This poem is set to the tune of the songs sung by the bauls or bands or wandering singers of India. It has the simplicity and charm of the folk-songs sung by the bauls. Singing is the vocation of these singers. The wandering singers have no home, no destination and they wander wherever they like. With lutes in their hands and ever-singing melodious songs they roam through echoing forests and echoing streets.

They believe in universal brotherhood. They keep on wandering and their feet obey the call of the world. They form a community or society in themselves. They are inspired, dedicated artist who love their art and practise it for art's sake. Mercenary motives don't influence them at all. They sing of the cities which have lost the glory which they once enjoyed. They sing of battles, of kings and warriors. They keep alive local and national legend , and communicate it to the people. Thus, they perform a very useful social function. They have no dream of the future and they have nothing to hope for. They live entirely in the present without any regrets for the past or hopes for the future. They no objects of love-relations, friends, wives etc. They do not expect some particular pleasure at any one place. They are nobody's slave.

Critical Points of the Poem:

1. The wandering singers form a community or society in themselves. Their songs are not meant for any one person in particular, but for the entire community of the city or town through which they pass.

2. National, religious, provincial, racial, caste, prejudices etc., do not divide them from their fellowmen.

3. They are cosmopolitan in their outlook. They believe in the oneness of all men. They are votaries of world brotherhood.

4. The wandering singers make the common man conscious of their cultural heritage. They keep alive local and national legend.

5. Their themes are simple, sometimes they are happy, and other times sorrowful.

6. They have no dream of the future. They remain in present. They do not have any regrets for the past and hopes for the future.

Stanza-Wise Summary :

Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home.

Difficult Word-Meanings :

1. Wind calls = the invitation of gusts of wind. 2. Lute = stringed musical instrument. 3. Roam = wander. 4. Kindred = relatives.

Summary of the First Stanza :

The wandering singers wander from village to village and city to city entertaining the people with their sweet songs. They have no fixed destination and house. Like the wind they wander freely. In fact they hear the call of wind which urges to move on, and so they keep on wandering. They never disobey the call of wind. From where they hear the call of wind, they turn to that side. Taking the musical instruments in their hands, they wander about singing through forests and streets, towns and villages. They regard the whole world their home and all the human beings their brothers and relatives. They are cosmopolitan in their outlook. They are votaries of world brotherhood. The walls of nationality, religion, provincialism and caste can not divide them.

Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things.

1. Our lays.....shed = they sing of cities which have lost their old glory. 2. Lustre = brightness, glory, fame. 3. Shed = to let fall, to cast off. 5. Laughter = joys and pleasure.

Summary of the Second Stanza :

The wandering singers sing of cities which have cast off their old fame and glory which (cities) once enjoyed. For instance the old feudal cities like Vijayanagar, Chittor and Golconda etc., whose palmy days are over. They sing of the beauty and joys of women who have been dead for a long time, such as Jhansi Ki Rani or Zeb-ul-Nissa. They sing of the triumphs in the battles which were fought in the past. They also sing of the glory of the kings who have been dead for long ago. They sing of the warriors who fought the battles bravely and sacrificed their lives in the honour of the kings and country. The themes of their songs are simple. The wandering singers mingle classical simplicity and austerity in the theme of their songs. The poetess says that a reader, while reading, sets his heart on happy, simple and sorrowful things.

Stanza Three :

What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow ? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go, No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait : The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

1. What hope...…sow = their nomadic life prevents them from making plans and cherishing hopes for future. They cannot have the dreams of a brighter and happier time. 2. Where the wind.......go = they move along in obedience to the call of the wind. 3. Tarry = stop, wait. 4. The voice.......fate = the wind blows wherever it likes, similarly the wandering singers wander wherever they want.

Summary of the Stanza Three :

The wandering singers do not nourish any desire, hope, dream and plan for future. They care only for the present and dislike the past. They wander on and on after being free from any worldly thing. The urge to wander is strong in them. They are free and the master of their will like the wind. They have no objects of love to stop them at one place, nor do they expect some particular pleasure at any one place. The call of the wind is their destiny. Like winds they wander wherever they like.

Critical Appreciation of the Poem:

Introduction: .

The poem entitled Wandering Singers is a charming lyric. This poem is one of the poems in the “Folk – Song” section of The Golden Threshold . It is a twelve - line song which breathes an air of buoyancy, carefreeness, of abandon and release. It is set to the tune of the songs sung by the bauls or bards or wandering singers of India. It has also the simplicity and charm of the folk - songs sung by the bauls. The present poem expresses the spirit of wandering singers and their attitude towards life, people, country and world. The wandering singers have no home, no destination. They wander wherever they like. With lutes in their hands they roam through echoing forests and echoing streets. They have belief in universal love and brotherhood. They have cosmopolitan outlook. They share their feelings through their songs with the world. They live without any desire, hope, dream and love.

Thought - Content:

The wandering singers express the spirit of their wandering life. The whole world is their home, for they follow the wind as it blows. They go wherever the wind invites them to go . They pass through the forests and the streets of towns and cities, and both forest and town resound with their song. With their musical instruments in their hands, they always keep on singing and wandering. They consider all men to be their brothers and all the world to be their house. Theirs is a social pantheism for they believe in the oneness of all men. They are votaries of world brotherhood. Their songs do not contain any hope for radiant future. They cherish no hopes, no desires, no dreams. They sing only about the glories of bygone days and, therefore, there is an echo of romanticism in their songs. They always wander on and never have any feeling of realizing their goal , for they have none .

Form of the Poem:

There are eleven syllables in each verse, which may lead us to believe that the verse is pentametric with an extra - syllable at the beginning or at the end. As it stands, it is an iambic foot followed by anapaests. It is rising rhythm and it corresponds with the rising tone of the song. The predominance of anapaests synchronises with the quick movement of the wandering feet. The regular prosodic arrangement is disturbed only in the first and tenth line. The third foot is rather clumsy, but it is endurable.

Style and Language:

There is great simplicity of language. The poetess has used the impressive words. As it is known ‘Dream’ is a keyword in her poetry. It occurs almost in every poem, sometimes twice in the same poem. She has also used this word in the present poem:

“What dreams shall we sow?”

She has used figurative language to enhance the beauty of the poem.

1. "Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet.” (Personification)

2. “The swords of old battles, the crown of old kings.” (Metaphor)

Theme and Moral of the Poem:

The gay wandering singers sing a song that is pensive. They sing uprooted cities, of dead women, of the kings and battles of the old, and above all, of happy and simple, and sorrowful things - the eternal themes:

“Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things.”

It is they who keep alive many a local and national legend, and communicate it to the people. They thus perform a very useful social function, for it is they who make the common conscious of their cultural heritage, of the glory and greatness of their past. Their themes are simple, sometimes they are happy, and at other times sorrowful.

Comparison with Other Poems:

The poem may be studied together with Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper . The two poems are different from one another, their sources of inspiration are different and their rhythms do not bear any resemblance. There is, however, one thing is common between them, i.e., both the wandering singers and the solitary reaper sing of the battles long ago and happy and simple and sorrowful things, and, in fact, these were the themes of the songs of all stranded sailors, and of soldiers in trenches, of wandering bands and beggar maids, and of lovers and lovely men. The poem invites comparison with another poem of Sarojini Naidu viz., Wandering Beggars . Both the wandering singers and beggars wander ever, on, from land to and with the staff of freedom in their hands. But the singers do not utter the name of Allah , as the beggars do.

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Wandering Singers Poem Summary

Hi Everyone!! This article will share Wandering Singers Poem Summary. This poem is written by Sarojini Naidu. In my previous posts, I have shared the questions and answers and summary of the poems – Cradle Song , Indian Weavers , Palanquin Bearers and Bangle Sellers . These poems are also written by Sarojini Naidu. So, you can check these posts as well.

Word Galaxy

Lutes – a lute is a kind of musical instrument with strings
Lays – (old usage) songs
Kindred – family or relatives
Cities whose lustre is shed – cities which were once great and famous, but not anymore
Bids us tarry – asks us to stay

The poem is about the band of folk singers who wander from towns to towns and from village to village to spread the message of love through their singing. The wandering singers have no fixed abode. They are forever on the road, leading to ever new places by the voice of the wind. Whether they are travelling through streets or forests, the places echo with their songs. They play lute (a musical instrument) as they roam from place to place. The theme of the songs that they sing goes back to the stories of the ancient battles or of old kings. They also sing about the cities that were once glorious but no more, happy and beautiful women who died a long time ago and about other happy and sad things.

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Wandering Singers

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Available answers.

Say whether these statements are true (T) or not true (NT). Change the not true statements to true.

The wandering singers stay and sing at each place for some time.
They sing in the street but not in the forest.
They do not make plans about where to go first, where next, and so on.

Which line tells us that the singers have no permanent home and no reason to stay at a place?

Look at the list of topics the singers mention. What do they think their listeners get from them? (line 9)

Compare the first line with the last. What is the difference? Which line talks about each day's activity? Which talks about the whole life?

The wandering singers have no permanent homes and families. Do they show any sadness about it? Or do they have a different notion of family and home? (line 4)

Look at the repetition of 'voice of the wind' (first line, last line), 'the wind calls' (last but two lines) as well as 'echoing forest', and 'echoing street' (second line). Are they specially appropriate to a poem about singing? In what way?

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Come for the Torture, Stay for the Poetry: This Might Be Taylor Swift’s Most Personal Album Yet

By Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield

Poets only want love if it’s torture. And when the poet is Taylor Swift , you always have to figure love and torture are never more than a few verses apart. Taylor became a legend as the poet laureate of teen romance. But that was kid stuff compared to the adult heartbreak of her stunning new album, The Tortured Poets Department . A year after getting out of a six-year relationship, Taylor’s got bad men on the brain. But they’ve always been her specialty. As she notes here, in a poem she includes in the physical edition, “It’s the worst men that I write best.”

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Even by Swiftian standards, she gets wildly ambitious with her songwriting here. This is an album that begins with an introductory poem by Stevie Nicks . The title song’s chorus goes, “You’re not Dylan Thomas/I’m not Patti Smith/This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel/We’re modern idiots.” In other words, it’s the small-town teen romance of “White Horse” updated for the big old city. Until you remember that the tortured poet Dylan Thomas famously died at his favorite Greenwich Village bar — which happened to be the White Horse Tavern. That’s the level she’s working on here.

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You can hear that it’s an album made in the aftershock of the Eras Tour, which was bigger than even Taylor could have wildest-dreamed. One revelation from the Eras Tour was how epic the Folklore and (especially) Evermore songs sounded, when ringing out loud in a stadium. It sounds as though Swift was shocked at how it felt to play her quietest songs live and hear how gigantic they could be given enough room. So Tortured Poets feels like Swift writing those Folkmore -and-(especially)- Evermore ballads, but giving them that stadium power in the studio.

As for torture — she’s got loads of that. From the sound of Midnights , everybody figured her relationship with Joe Alwyn was a happy little “Sweet Nothing,” except now she portrays it as more like “Tolerate It” with a side order of “Bejeweled.” This is an album nobody saw coming, even though she gave so many signs.

But if you’re stuck on happy endings, why the hell are you listening to a Taylor album? “The Alchemy” is an outlier on an album where her heart goes 1 for 16. “ My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”and “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” are witty reports on falling in love with needy men who don’t reciprocate. As the doll sings in “My Boy,” “Pull my string and I’ll tell you that he runs because he loves me.”

Some songs drop hints that dare you to take them as straight-up autobiography. Is she singing about Joe Alwyn here, Lucy Dacus there, Matty Healy everywhere? For many fans, her romance with Healy was already retconned out of their brains, yet she scatters not-necessarily-subtle clues. Like when an ex reminds her of the Eighties U.K. cult band, the Blue Nile: “He sent me ‘Downtown Nights,’ I hadn’t heard it in a while.” (That’s the song Healy basically rewrote for The 1975’s “Love If We Made It.” Do we even need to mention the song is from 1989?) But as she says bluntly in her poem, “He never even scratched the surface of me. None of them did.”

“Swift wrote two of the nastiest highlights solo, “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” and“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” Aaron Dessner worked on the softer tracks—“So Long, London,” “loml”—while Jack Antonoff provides the big bam boom, as in the synth-disco Vince Clarke homage “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.” Post Malone sounds great in the single “Fortnight,” just as Florence Welch does in “Florida” (“it’s a hell of a drug”), with its dynamic chorus, “Fuck me up, Florida!” When it comes to a one-line summary of how it feels to be single and jaded in your 30s, you can’t do much better than “My friends all smell like weed or little babies.”

“The Manuscript” is a bonus track, but it’s one of the pivotal songs. (Taylor likes to do it that way—ask any fan of “New Romantics” or “Right Where You Left Me.”) A young woman falls for a charming older man: “He said if the sex was half as good as the conversation, soon they’d be pushing strollers/But soon it was over.” Looking back at it later, she still isn’t clear how she feels about this story.. (“He said since she was so wise beyond her years everything had been aboveboard/She wasn’t sure.”) But it’s her manuscript, and her life to write, just as it’s her name to disgrace. It’s not really a song about a man — it’s about a woman starting to see herself as the author, instead of just a character in her own life.

“The Black Dog” is another crucial bonus ballad, with a classic Nashville-worthy premise: her ex forgot to change his phone settings post-breakup, so she can still track his movements via GPS, and being Taylor, she does. (“You forgot to turn it off”? Yeah right — he’s a guy in a Taylor Swift song, which means he planned it that way.) She sees him walk into a bar called The Black Dog, where he hears one of their songs on the jukebox. (By the pop-punk troopers the Starting Line.). But he’s trying to pick up a girl who’s too young to recognize the tune.

Stevie Nicks’ introductory poem (only in the physical edition) comes from last summer, dated August 13, with Stevie writing, “For T—and me…” It’s the kind of rock & roll melodrama Stevie knows well: “She looked back from her future/And shed a few tears/He looked into his past/And actually felt fear.” Stevie is a guiding angel all over these songs—so it’s a powerful moment when Taylor slips her into the killer finale “Clara Bow.” It’s an ode to a tragic 1920s movie star, which is definitely Stevie’s kind of thing. (One of her greatest recent songs is her ode to “Mabel Normand.”)

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But at the end of the song, the washed-up ingenue listens as her replacement gets a new set of compliments: “You look like Taylor Swift in this light/We’re loving it/You’ve got edge/She never did.” It’s the nightmare of “Nothing New” come true — people forget about yesterday’s ingenue. But this isn’t merely a song about show-biz. It’s about any adult who wonders why — after all these years — she still feels pain or terror when someone else lights up the room.

The Tortured Poets Department has a Reputation edge to it, and like Reputation , it sounds designed to confuse many people who try to decode it before listening. In her “Summary Poem,” Taylor calls it “a debrief, a detailed rewinding/For the purpose of warning/For the sake of reminding.” But anyone can hear that deep in the music. All over these songs, Taylor lives up to her credo that “all’s fair in love and poetry.” But as she shows in The Tortured Poets Department , both can get brutal.

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Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets' is written in blood

On Taylor Swift's 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department , her artistry is tangled up in the details of her private life and her deployment of celebrity. But Swift's lack of concern about whether these songs speak to and for anyone but herself is audible throughout the album. Beth Garrabrant /Courtesy of the artist hide caption

For all of its fetishization of new sounds and stances, pop music was born and still thrives by asking fundamental questions. For example, what do you do with a broken heart? That's an awfully familiar one. Yet romantic failure does feel different every time. Its isolating sting produces a kind of obliterating possessiveness: my pain, my broken delusions, my hope for healing. A broken heart is a screaming baby demanding to be held and coddled and nurtured until it grows up and learns how to function properly. This is as true in the era of the one-percent glitz goddess as it was when blues queens and torch singers organized society's crying sessions. It's true of Taylor Swift , who's equated songwriting with the heart's recovery since she released " Teardrops on my Guitar " 18 years ago, and whose 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department , is as messy and confrontational as a good girl's work can get, blood on her pages in a classic shade of red.

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Back in her Lemonade days, when her broken heart turned her into a bearer of revolutionary spirit, Swift's counterpart and friendly rival, Beyoncé , got practical, advising her listeners that while feelings do need tending, a secured bank account is what counts. "Your best revenge is your paper," she sang .

For Swift, the best revenge is her pen. One of the first Tortured Poets songs revealed back in February (one of the album's many bonus tracks, it turns out, but a crucial framing device) is called " The Manuscript "; in it, a woman re-reads her own scripted account of a "torrid love affair." Screenwriting is one of a few literary ambitions Swift aligns with this project. At The Grove mall in Los Angeles, Swift partnered with Spotify to create a mini-library where new lyrics were inscribed in weathered books and on sheets of parchment in the days leading up to its release. The scene was a fans' photo op invoking high art and even scripture. In the photographs of the installation that I saw, every bound volume in the library bears Swift's name. The message is clear: When Taylor Swift makes music, she authors everything around her.

For years, Swift has been pop's leading writer of autofiction , her work exploring new dimensions of confessional songwriting, making it the foundation of a highly mediated public-private life. The standard line about her teasing lyrical disclosures (and it's correct on one level) is that they're all about fueling fan interest. But on Tortured Poets , she taps into a much more established and respected tradition. Using autobiography as a sword of justice is a move as ancient as the women saints who smote abusive fathers and priests in the name of an early Christian Jesus; in our own time, just among women, it's been made by confessional poets like Sylvia Plath, memoirists from Maya Angelou to Joyce Maynard and literary stars like the Nobel prize winner Annie Ernaux. And, of course, Swift's reluctant spiritual mother, Joni Mitchell .

Even in today's blather-saturated cultural environment, a woman speaking out after silence can feel revolutionary; that this is an honorable act is a fundamental principle within many writers' circles. "I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay, how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only home I ever have," Natalie Goldberg declares in Writing Down the Bones , the most popular writing manual of the 20th century. When on this album's title track, Swift sings, "I think some things I never say," she's making an offhand joke; but this is the album where she does say all the things she thinks, about love at least, going deeper into the personal zone that is her métier than ever before. Sharing her darkest impulses and most mortifying delusions, she fills in the blank spaces in the story of several much-mediated affairs and declares this an act of liberation that has changed and ultimately strengthened her. She spares no one, including herself; often in these songs, she considers her naiveté and wishfulness through a grown woman's lens and admits she's made a fool of herself. But she owns her heartbreak now. She alone will have the last word on its shape and its effects.

This includes other people's sides of her stories. The songs on Tortured Poets , most of which are mid- or up-tempo ballads spun out in the gossamer style that's defined Swift's confessional mode since Folklore , build a closed universe of private and even stolen moments, inhabited by only two people: Swift and a man. With a few illuminating exceptions that stray from the album's plot, she rarely looks beyond their interactions. The point is not to observe the world, but to disclose the details of one sometimes-shared life, to lay bare what others haven't seen. Tortured Poets is the culmination of a catalog full of songs in which Swift has taken us into the bedrooms where men pleasured or misled her, the bars where they charmed her, the empty playgrounds where they sat on swings with her and promised something they couldn't give. When she sings repeatedly that one of the most suspect characters on the album told her she was the love of her life, she's sharing something nobody else heard. That's the point. She's testifying under her own oath.

Swift's musical approach has always been enthusiastic and absorbent. She's created her own sounds by blending country's sturdy song structures with R&B's vibes, rap's cadences and pop's glitz; as a personality and a performer, she's all arms, hugging the world. The sound of Tortured Poets offers that familiar embrace, with pop tracks that sparkle with intelligence, and meditative ones that wrap tons of comforting aura around Swift's ruminations. Beyond a virtually undetectable Post Malone appearance and a Florence Welch duet that also serves as an homage to Swift's current exemplar/best friendly rival, Lana Del Rey , the album alternates between co-writes with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, the producers who have helped Swift find her mature sound, which blends all of her previous approaches without favoring any prevailing trend. There are the rap-like, conversational verses, the reaching choruses, the delicate piano meditations, the swooning synth beats. Antonoff's songs come closest to her post- 1989 chart toppers; Dessner's fulfill her plans to remain an album artist. Swift has also written two songs on her own, a rarity for her; both come as close to ferocity as she gets. As a sustained listen, Tortured Poets harkens back to high points throughout Swift's career, creating a comforting environment that both supports and balances the intensity of her storytelling.

It's with her pen that Swift executes her battle plans. As always, especially when she dwells on the work and play of emotional intimacy, her lyrics are hyper-focused, spilling over with detail, editing the mess of desire, projection, communion and pain that constitutes romance into one sharp perspective: her own. She renders this view so intensely that it goes beyond confession and becomes a form of writing that can't be disputed. Remember that parchment and her quill pen; her songs are her new testaments. It's a power play, but for many fans, especially women, this ambition to be definitive feels like a necessary corrective to the misrepresentations or silence they face from ill-intentioned or cluelessly entitled men.

"A great writer can be a dangerous creature, however gentle and nice in person," the biographer Hermione Lee once wrote . Swift has occasionally taken this idea to heart before, especially on her once-scorned, now revered hip-hop experiment, Reputation . But now she's screaming from the hilltop, sparing no one, including herself as she tries to prop up one man's flagging interest and then falls for others' duplicity. "I know my pain is such an imposition," Swift sang in last year's " You're Losing Me ," a prequel to the explosive confessional mode of Tortured Poets , where that pain grows nearly suicidal, feeds romantic obsession, and drives her to become a "functional alcoholic" and a madwoman who finds strength in chaos in a way that recalls her friend Emma Stone's cathartic performance as Bella in Poor Things . (Bella, remember, comes into self-possession by learning to read and write.) " Who's afraid of little old me? " Swift wails in the album's window-smashing centerpiece bearing that title; in " But Daddy I Love Him ," she runs around screaming with her dress unbuttoned and threatens to burn down her whole world. These accounts of unhinged behavior reinforce the message that everybody had better be scared of this album — especially her exes, but also her business associates, the media and, yes, her fans, who are not spared in her dissection of just who's made her miserable over the past few years.

Listen to the album

I'm not getting into the dirty details; those who crave them can listen to Tortured Poets themselves and easily uncover them. They're laid out so clearly that anyone who's followed Swift's overly documented life will instantly comprehend who's who: the depressive on the heath, the tattooed golden retriever in her dressing room. Here's my reading of her album-as-novel — others' interpretations may vary: Swift's first-person protagonist (let's call her "Taylor") begins in a memory of a long-ago love affair that left her melancholy but on civil terms, then has an early meeting with a tempting rogue, who declares he's the Dylan Thomas to her Patti Smith; no, she says, though she's sorely tempted, we're "modern idiots," and she leaves him behind for a while. Then we get scenes from a stifling marriage to a despondent and distracted child-man. "So long, London," she declares, fleeing that dead end. From then on, it's the rogue on all cylinders. They connect, defy the daddy figures who think they're bad for each other, speak of rings and baby carriages. Those daddies continue to meddle in this newfound freedom.

In this main story arc, Swift writes about erotic desire as she never has before: She's "fresh out the slammer" (ouch, the rhetoric) and her bedsheets are on fire. She cannot stop rhapsodizing about this new love object and her commitment to their outlaw hunger for each other. It's " Love Story ," updated and supersized, with a proper Romeo at its center — a forbidden, tragic soulmate, a perfect match who's also a disastrous one. Swift peppers this section of Tortured Poets with name-drops ("Jack" we know, " Lucy " might be a tricky slap at Romeo, hard to tell) and instantly searchable references; he sends her a song by The Blue Nile and traces hearts on her face but tells revolting jokes in the bar and eventually reveals himself as a cad, a liar, a coward. She recovers, but not really. In the end, she does move on but still dreams of him hearing one of their songs on a jukebox and dolefully realizing the young girl he's now with has never heard it before.

Insert the names yourself. They do matter, because her backstories are key to Swift's appeal; they both keep her human-sized and amplify her fame. Swift's artistry is tied up in her deployment of celebrity, a slippery state in which a real life becomes emblematic. Like no one before, she's turned her spotlit day-to-day into a conceptual project commenting on women's freedom, artistic ambition and the place of the personal in the public sphere. As a celebrity, Swift partners with others: her model and musician friends, her actor/musician/athlete consorts, brands, even (warily) political causes. And with her fans, the co-creators of her stardom.

Her songs stand apart, though. They remain the main vehicle through which, negotiating unimaginable levels of renown, Swift continually insists on speaking only for herself. A listener has to work to find the "we" in her soliloquies. There are plenty of songs on Tortured Poets in which others will find their own experiences, from the sultry blue eroticism of " Down Bad " to the click of recognition in " I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) ." But Swift's lack of concern about whether these songs speak for and to anyone besides herself is audible throughout the album. It's the sound of her freedom.

Taylor Swift: Tiny Desk Concert

She also confronts the way fame has cost her, fully exploring questions she raised on Reputation and in " Anti-Hero ." There are hints, more than hints, that her romance with the rogue was derailed partly because her business associates found it problematic, a danger to her precious reputation. And when she steps away from the man-woman predicament, Swift ponders the ephemeral reality of the success that has made private decisions nearly impossible. A lovely minuet co-written with Dessner, " Clara Bow " stages a time-lapsed conversation between Swift and the power players who've helped orchestrate her rise even as she knows they won't be concerned with her eventual obsolescence. "You look like Clara Bow ," they say, and later, "You look like Stevie Nicks in '75." Then, a turn: "You look like Taylor Swift," the suits (or is it the public, the audience?) declare. "You've got edge she never did." The song ends abruptly — lights out. This scene, redolent of All About Eve , reveals anxieties that all of Swift's love songs rarely touch upon.

One reason Swift went from being a normal-level pop star to sharing space with Beyoncé as the era's defining spirit is because she is so good at making the personal huge, without fussing over its translation into universals. In two decades of talking back to heartbreakers, Swift has called out gaslighting, belittling, neglect, false promises — all the hidden injuries that lovers inflict on each other, and that a sexist society often overlooks or forgives more easily from men. In "The Manuscript," which calls back to a romantic trauma outside the Tortured Poets frame, she sings of being a young woman with an older man making "coffee in a French press" and then "only eating kids cereal" and sleeping in her mother's bed when he dumps her; any informed Swift fan's mind will race to songs and headlines about cads she's previously called out in fan favorites like "Dear John" and "All Too Well" — the beginnings of the mission Tortured Poets fulfills.

Reviews of more Taylor Swift albums on NPR

In the haze of 'Midnights,' Taylor Swift softens into an expanded sound

Let's Talk About Taylor Swift's 'Folklore'

Show And Tell: On 'Lover,' Taylor Swift Lets Listeners In On Her Own Terms

The Old Taylor's Not Dead

The Many New Voices Of Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift Leaps Into Pop With 'Red'

Swift's pop side (and perhaps her co-writers' influence) shows in the way she balances the claustrophobic referentiality of her writing with sparkly wordplay and well-crafted sentimental gestures. On Tortured Poets , she's less strategic than usual. She lets the details fall the way they would in a confession session among besties, not trying to change them from painful memories into points of connection. She's just sharing. Swift bares every crack in her broken heart as a way of challenging power structures, of arguing that emotional work that men can sidestep is still expected from women who seem to own the world.

Throughout Tortured Poets, Swift is trying to work out how emotional violence occurs: how men inflict it on women and women cultivate it within themselves. It's worth asking how useful such a brutal evisceration of one privileged private life can be in a larger social or political sense; critics, including NPR's Leah Donnella in an excellent 2018 essay on the limits of the songwriter's reach, have posed that question about Swift's work for years. But we should ask why Swift's work feels so powerful to so many — why she has become, in the eyes of millions, a standard-bearer and a freedom fighter. Unlike Beyoncé, who loves a good emblem and is always thinking about history and serving the culture and communities she claims, Swift is making an ongoing argument about smaller stories still making a difference. Her callouts can be viewed as petty, reflecting entitlement or even narcissism. But they're also part of her wrestling with the very notion of significance and challenging hierarchies that have proven to be so stubborn they can feel intractable. That Swift has reached such a peak of influence in the wake of the #MeToo movement isn't an accident; even as that chapter in feminism's history can seem to be closing, she insists on saying, "believe me." That isn't the same as saying "believe all women," but by laying claim to disputed storylines and fighting against silence, she at the very least reminds listeners that such actions matter.

Listening to Tortured Poets , I often thought of "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance," a song that Sinéad O'Connor recorded when she was in her young prime, not yet banished from the mainstream for her insistence on speaking politically. Like Swift's best work, its lyrics are very specific — allegedly about a former manager and lover — yet her directness and conviction expand their reach. In 1990, that a woman in her mid-20s would address a belittling man in this way felt startling and new. Taylor Swift came to prominence in a culture already changing to make room for such testimonies, if not — still — fully able to honor them. She has made it more possible for them to be heard. "I talk and you won't listen to me," O'Connor wailed . "I know your answer already." Swift doesn't have to worry about whether people will listen. But she knows that this could change. That's why she is writing it all down.

Taylor Swift

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OK, she’s worth $1 billion, but can Taylor Swift write poetry? We ask the experts.

Deep Read ( 5 Min. )
By Stephen Humphries Staff writer @steve_humphries

April 17, 2024

Taylor Swift occupies a position in popular culture that makes Beatlemania seem like a passing fad. Her every move is scrutinized.

The April 19 release of her new album has been shrouded in a blackout. No advance singles. Zero interviews. But Ms. Swift’s 11th LP does appear to follow a poetic theme. The album’s tagline is “All’s fair in love and poetry.” It’s being released during National Poetry Month.

Why We Wrote This

Do poems and lyrics serve the same function in art? Or are they entirely different mediums? We asked poets (and Swift fans) for their analysis of Taylor Swift’s wordsmithing.

Consequently, “The Tortured Poets Department” is heating up a debate that’s been simmering since before Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016: Can lyrics qualify as poetry?

Historically, poems were often performed aloud with musical accompaniment. The etymology of “lyric poetry” is the Greek word lyrikos, which means “singing to the lyre.”

“There are people out there who would argue that a pop star can’t be a poet,” says Elly McCausland, who teaches the “Literature (Taylor’s Version)” course at Ghent University in Belgium. “She’s deliberately pushing back against that and also asking us to examine our own attitudes. What is poetry? What can poetry be?”

Taylor Swift almost eclipsed the eclipse.

During the moon’s astronomical photobomb of the sun on April 8, the songwriter posted an update to Instagram. Her video reel featured a typewriter hammering out the words, “Crowd goes wild at her fingertips. Half moonshine, full eclipse.” The first tease from Ms. Swift’s new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” wasn’t a snippet of music. It was a lyric.

The April 19 release has been shrouded in its own form of blackout. No advance singles. Zero interviews. The result? The album is as mysterious as the identity of the boy who inspired Ms. Swift’s 2008 song “Love Story.” But Ms. Swift’s 11th LP does appear to follow a poetic theme. The album’s tagline is “All’s fair in love and poetry.” It’s being released during National Poetry Month.

Ms. Swift occupies a position in popular culture that makes Beatlemania seem like a passing fad. Her every move is scrutinized.

Consequently, her album is raising the question of whether lyrics qualify as poetry. “The Tortured Poets Department” is heating up a debate that’s been simmering since Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016.

“There are people out there who would argue that a pop star can’t be a poet,” says Elly McCausland , who teaches the “Literature (Taylor’s Version)” course at Ghent University in Belgium. “She’s deliberately pushing back against that and also asking us to examine our own attitudes. What is poetry? What can poetry be? Can a woman be a chairman of a tortured poets department?”

Before Ms. Swift was a songwriter , she was a poet. In fourth grade, she won a national poetry contest for her composition “Monster in My Closet.” Nowadays, she’s writing about herself as the “monster on the hill” in the hit single “Anti-Hero.” That song features couplets that showcase her wordplay: “Midnights become my afternoons / When my depression works the graveyard shift / All the people I’ve ghosted stand there in the room.”

But is it poetry?

Historically, poems were often performed aloud with musical accompaniment. The etymology of “lyric poetry” is the Greek word lyrikos, which means “singing to the lyre.”

“Gradually, they’ve drifted apart. And now I think with artists like Taylor Swift, we see them coming back together,” says Dr. McCausland, who teaches students how the songwriter fits into a genealogy of literature dating back to the 10th century.

By contrast, Publishers Weekly poetry reviews editor Maya C. Popa says although lyrics can be poetic and poems can be musical, they are different mediums.

“On the page, as a poet, without the music, you’re putting a different kind of pressure on the language to convey musicality, to convey depth, and to lean into mystery,” says Ms. Popa, a Swiftie whose latest book is titled “Wound Is the Origin of Wonder.” “[T.S.] Eliot said genuine poetry communicates before it is understood. I don’t think that’s true, necessarily, for song lyrics.”

She adds that debates over whether lyrics qualify as poetry “reveal the frivolities of the human ego … and our impulse to create hierarchies in all things.”

Ms. Swift’s connections to poetry predate her latest album. She has cited Emily Dickinson – who is her sixth cousin, three times removed – as an influence. The liner notes for “Red” name-check Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda. In 2017, the pop star published two poems in a mock-up magazine bundled with her “Reputation” album. But it was the 2020 album, “Folklore,” on which Ms. Swift appeared to consciously court comparison to classic bards. Its artwork features a quill-like font and photos of the singer wandering through woods in cottagecore outfits. The solitary writer communing with nature. Not a single paparazzo in sight.

“Take me to the Lakes, where all the poets went to die,” she sings on the album closer “the lakes.” Lord Byron and his fellow Romantics were rock stars of the 19th century. By contrast, female geniuses faced social censure. Emily Dickinson was deemed a “weird spinster,” says Ms. Popa. In her song, Ms. Swift asks, “Tell me what are my Wordsworth.” It raises the question: If the author of “Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me” were alive today, would she be worth $1 billion?

“[Swift’s] really interested in thinking about, ‘Why is what I’m doing different to what Wordsworth [was] doing? And how is it the same? And what is the tension between those things?’” says Clio Doyle , author of the upcoming book, “Dear Reader: Taylor Swift and the Idea of English Literature.”

Dr. Doyle cites the 10-minute version of “All Too Well” as an example of Ms. Swift’s literary wordsmithery. The song chronicles a brief, clandestine relationship. “You kept me like a secret / But I kept you like an oath,” Ms. Swift sings.

“The ways in which she’s explaining why it was great and why it shouldn’t have ended, and why it’s such a tragedy that the guy ended it, are also kind of ways in which she’s revealing that maybe it was never great at all,” says Dr. Doyle, who teaches a course on Taylor Swift and Literature at Queen Mary University of London.

In her songs, Ms. Swift has checked into the heartbreak hotel so many times that she really should sign up for the rewards program. So it’s not entirely surprising that her social media posts are signed, “Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department.” But some of the new album’s song titles – “But Daddy I Love Him” and “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” – suggest that Ms. Swift isn’t taking herself too seriously.

“She exemplifies that side of poetry – the lyricism, but also the approachability – which is where I would say that poetry is going in general,” says poet Kara Lewis , a Best of the Net nominee and an editor for On the Left Bank, a journal of socialist art and poetry.

Poetry’s new stars are so-called Instapoets, explains Ms. Lewis, who once spent 20 hours creating a light-up sign to take to Ms. Swift’s “1989” tour. Platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr, and Substack offer an alternative to “gatekeep-y” institutions. The Instapoetry genre tends to be bite-size, with subjects ranging from social justice issues to diaristic reflections on relationships. Much like Ms. Swift’s lyrics.

“There are poems for every day and every moment of our lives because poets make the world more sensible to us, through attention and reflection,” said Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, president and executive director of the Academy of American Poets in a quote provided via email. “I’m jazzed to hear what Swift makes of poetry’s calling in her album. ... We hope she brings millions of readers across the globe to poetry.”

At Newton Free Library in Massachusetts, a “Tortured Poets Department” display features books such as “Postcolonial Love Poem” by Natalie Diaz and “Blushing” by Paul B. Janeczko. Nationwide, numerous libraries have scheduled listening parties for the new album that will also feature blackout poetry .

“I’m very pleased that people gravitate to her lyrics,” says Ms. Popa, whose gateway to poetry was listening to Rufus Wainwright’s literary songs. “I hope it inspires them to write their own lyrics, to write their own poems, and then to go in search of poets who have dedicated themselves to poetry. I think that’s the best possible scenario.”

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Taylor Swift’s ‘Poets’ Arrives With a Promotional Blitz (and a Second LP)

The pop superstar’s latest album was preceded by a satellite radio channel, a word game, a return to TikTok and an actual library. For her fans, more is always welcome.

Share full article

The album cover for Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” which depicts the star lying on pillows in sleepwear, draping her arms over her body.

By Ben Sisario

Taylor Swift was already the most ubiquitous pop star in the galaxy, her presence dominating the music charts, the concert calendar, the Super Bowl, the Grammys.

Then it came time for her to promote a new album.

In the days leading up to the release of “The Tortured Poets Department” on Friday, Swift became all but inescapable, online and seemingly everywhere else. Her lyrics were the basis for an Apple Music word game . A Spotify-sponsored, Swift-branded “ library installation ,” in muted pink and gray, popped up in a shopping complex in Los Angeles. In Chicago, a QR code painted on a brick wall directed fans to another Easter egg on YouTube. Videos on Swift’s social media accounts, showing antique typewriters and globes with pins, were dissected for clues about her music. SiriusXM added a Swift radio station; of course it’s called Channel 13 (Taylor’s Version).

About the only thing Swift didn’t do was an interview with a journalist.

At this stage in Swift’s career, an album release is more than just a moment to sell music; it’s all but a given that “The Tortured Poets Department” will open with gigantic sales numbers, many of them for “ghost white,” “phantom clear” and other collector-ready vinyl variants . More than that, the album’s arrival is a test of the celebrity-industrial complex overall, with tech platforms and media outlets racing to capture whatever piece of the fan frenzy they can get.

Threads, the newish social media platform from Meta, primed Swifties for their idol’s arrival there, and offered fans who shared Swift’s first Threads post a custom badge. Swift stunned the music industry last week by breaking ranks with her record label, Universal, and returning her music to TikTok, which Universal and other industry groups have said pays far too little in royalties. Overnight, TikTok unveiled “The Ultimate Taylor Swift In-App Experience,” offering fans digital goodies like a “Tortured Poets-inspired animation” on their feed.

Before the album’s release on Friday, Swift revealed that a music video — for “Fortnight,” the first single, featuring Post Malone — would arrive on Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern time. At 2 a.m., she had another surprise: 15 more songs. “I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you,” she wrote in a social media post , bringing “The Anthology” edition of the album to 31 tracks.

“The Tortured Poets Department,” which Swift, 34, announced in a Grammy acceptance speech in February — she had the Instagram post ready to go — lands as Swift’s profile continues to rise to ever-higher levels of cultural saturation.

Her Eras Tour , begun last year, has been a global phenomenon, crashing Ticketmaster and lifting local economies ; by some estimates, it might bring in as much as $2 billion in ticket sales — by far a new record — before it ends later this year. Swift’s romance with the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has been breathlessly tracked from its first flirtations last summer to their smooch on the Super Bowl field in February. The mere thought that Swift might endorse a presidential candidate this year sent conspiracy-minded politicos reeling .

“The Tortured Poets Department” — don’t even ask about the missing apostrophe — arrived accompanied by a poem written by Stevie Nicks that begins, “He was in love with her/Or at least she thought so.” That establishes what many fans correctly anticipated as the album’s theme of heartbreak and relationship rot, Swift’s signature topic. “I love you/It’s ruining my life,” she sings on “Fortnight.”

Fans were especially primed for the fifth track, “So Long, London,” given that (1) Swift has said she often sequences her most vulnerable and emotionally intense songs fifth on an LP, and (2) the title suggested it may be about Joe Alwyn, the English actor who was Swift’s boyfriend for about six years, reportedly until early 2023 . Indeed, “So Long” is an epic breakup tune, with lines like “You left me at the house by the heath” and “I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free.” Tracks from the album leaked on Wednesday, and fans have also interpreted some songs as being about Matty Healy , the frontman of the band the 1975, whom Swift was briefly linked to last year.

The album’s title song starts with a classic Swift detail of a memento from a lost love: “You left your typewriter at my apartment/Straight from the tortured poets department.” It also name-drops Dylan Thomas, Patti Smith and, somewhat surprisingly given that company, Charlie Puth, the singer-songwriter who crooned the hook on Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again,” a No. 1 hit in 2015. (Swift has praised Wiz Khalifa and that song in the past.)

Other big moments include “Florida!!!,” featuring Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine, in which Swift declares — after seven big percussive bangs — that the state “is one hell of a drug.” Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, the producers and songwriters who have been Swift’s primary collaborators in recent years, both worked on “Tortured Poets,” bringing their signature mix of moody, pulsating electronic tracks and delicate acoustic moments, like a bare piano on “Loml” (as in “love of my life”).

As the ninth LP Swift has released in five years, “Tortured Poets” is the latest entry in a remarkable creative streak. That includes five new studio albums and four rerecordings of her old music — each of which sailed to No. 1. When Swift played SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles in August, she spoke from the stage about her recording spurt, saying that the forced break from touring during the Covid-19 pandemic had spurred her to connect with fans by releasing more music.

“And so I decided, in order to keep that connection going,” she said , “if I couldn’t play live shows with you, I was going to make and release as many albums as humanly possible.”

That was two albums ago.

Ben Sisario covers the music industry. He has been writing for The Times since 1998. More about Ben Sisario

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .

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Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is here. Is it poetry? This is what experts say

Taylor Swift fans check out a new pop-up opening to celebrate Taylor Swift’s upcoming album “The Tortured Poets Department,” at the Grove in Los Angeles on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

This cover image released by Republic Records show “The Tortured Poets Department” by Taylor Swift. (Republic Records via AP)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Taylor Swift has released her 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”

But just how poetic is it? Is it even possible to close read lyrics like poems, divorced from their source material?

The Associated Press spoke to four experts to assess how Swift’s latest album stacks up to poetry.

Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” is here.

In her review, AP Music Writer Maria Sherman calls it “an amalgamation of an artist who has spent the last few years re-recording her life’s work and touring its material , filtered through synth-pop anthems, breakup ballads, provocative and matured subject matter.”
Swift announced a surprise two hours after the album release: 15 additional tracks.
The project is Swift’s first original album since her record-breaking Eras Tour kicked off last year.

IS TAYLOR SWIFT A POET?

Allison Adair, a professor who teaches poetry and other literary forms at Boston College, says yes.

“My personal opinion is that if someone writes poems and considers themself a poet, then they’re a poet,” she says. “And Swift has demonstrated that she takes it pretty seriously. She’s mentioned (Pablo) Neruda in her work before, she has an allusion to (William) Wordsworth, she cites Emily Dickinson as one of her influences.”

She also said her students told her Swift’s B-sides — not her radio singles — tend to be her most poetic, which is true of poets, too. “Their most well-known poems are the ones that people lock into the most, that are the clearest, and in a way, don’t always have the mystery of poetry.”

Professor Elizabeth Scala, who teaches a course on Swift’s songbook at the University of Texas at Austin, says “there is something poetical about the way she writes,” adding that her work on “The Tortured Poets Department” references a time before print technology when people sang poems. “In the earliest stages of English poetry, they were inseparable,” she says. “Not absolutely identical, but they have a long and rich history together that is re-energized by Taylor Swift.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns look at a record during a visit to Li-Pi record store in Beijing, China, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool)

“It’s proper to talk about every songwriter as a poet,” says Michael Chasar, a poetry and popular culture professor at Willamette University.

“There are many things musicians and singer-songwriters can do that poetry cannot,” Adair says, citing melisma, or the ability to hold out a single syllable over many notes, as an example. Or the nature of a song with uplifting production and morose lyricism, which can create a confusing and rich texture. “That’s something music can do viscerally and poetry has to do in different ways.”

“She might say her works are poetry,” adds Scala. “But I also think the music is so important — kind of poetry-plus.”

As for current U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón ? “Poetry and song lyrics aren’t exactly the same (we poets have to make all our music with only words and breath),” she wrote to the AP. “But having an icon like Taylor bring more attention to poetry as a genre is exciting.”

HOW SWIFT USES POETRY ON THE SONG “FORTNIGHT”

Scala sees Swift’s influences on “The Tortured Poets Department” as including Sylvia Plath, a confessional poet she previously drew inspiration from on songs like “Mad Woman” and “Tolerate It.”

“Fortnight” uses enjambed lines (there’s no end stop, or punctuation at the end of each line) and Scala points out the dissonance between the music’s smoothness and its lyrics, like in the line “My mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February.” “It kind of encapsulates boredom with the ordinary and then she unleashes a kind of tension and anger in the ordinary in those verses,” she says. In the verses, she says Swift “explodes the domestic,” and that fights up against the music, which is “literary.”

Swift’s lyrics, too, allow for multi-dimensional readings : “I touched you” could be physicality and infidelity in the song, Scala says, or it could mean it emotionally — as in, I moved you.

Swift has long played with rhyme and unexpected rhythm. “She’ll often establish a pattern and won’t satisfy it — and that often comes in a moment of emotional ache,” says Adair.

On “Fortnight,” it appears in a few ways. Adair points out that the chorus is more syncopated than the rest of the song — which means Swift uses many more syllables for the same beat. “It gives this rushed quality,” she says.

“Rhyming ‘alcoholic’ and ‘aesthetic,’ she plays a lot with assonance. It is technically a vowel-driven repetition of sounds,” she adds. There’s a tension, too, in the title “Fortnight,” an archaic term used for a song with contemporary devices. “There’s an allusion to treason, and some of the stuff is hyper romantic, but a lot of it is very much a kind of unapologetic, plain speech. And there’s something poetic about that.”

“From the perspective of harnessing particular poetic devices, this kind of trucks in familiar metaphors for one’s emotional state,” Chasar says of “Fortnight.”

He says the speaker is “arrested in the past and a future that could’ve been,” using a dystopic image of American suburbs as a metaphor and “cultivating a sense of numbness, which we hear in the intonation of the lyrics.”

“But the speaker is so overwhelmed by their emotional state that they can’t think of any other associations with politically charged lyrics like ‘treason’ and ‘Florida’ and ‘lost in America’ that many of us would,” he says.

The title “Fortnight,” he adds, “is totally poetic. It’s also a period of 14 days, or two weeks. For most of us ‘lost in America,’ it means a paycheck.”

WHAT ARE SOME OTHER POETIC MOMENTS ON THE ALBUM?

“She’s making references to Greek mythology,” say Scala, like in “Cassandra,” which is part of a surprise set of songs Swift dropped Friday.

The title references the daughter of king of Troy, who foretold the city’s destruction but had been cursed so that no one believed her.

“She’s the truth teller. No one wants to believe, and no one can believe,” she says.

Swift is “thinking in terms of literary paradigms about truth telling.”

Adair looks to “So Long, London": from the chiming, high school harmonies that open it to a plain first verse, “quiet and domestic,” she says.

“That mismatch is very poetic, because it’s pairing things from two different tonal registers, essentially, and saying they both have value, and they belong together: The kind of high mindedness and the high tradition and the kind of casual every day. That’s something the Beat poets did too, re-redefining the relationship between the sacred and profane.”

AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.

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English poem "Wandering Singers" by Sarojini Naidu
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Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu
The poem's imagery is rich and evocative, and it creates a vivid picture of the wandering singers' journey. The poem is also notable for its use of repetition, which creates a sense of rhythm and movement. Overall, "Wandering Singers" is a beautiful and moving poem that captures the spirit of the wandering minstrel. The poem is similar to Naidu ...
Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu
The poet Sarojini Naidu is a great poet to paint the life of wandering singers in poetic words. The poem "Wandering Singers" by Sarojini Naidu is about the band of folk singers wandering through their singing from town to town and from village to village to spread the message of love.
Wandering Singers Poem by Sarojini Naidu Summary
Introduction. The poem Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu is about a group of people who keep wandering from villages to towns and from towns to forests. While on the way, they keep singing. According to the poet, these wandering singers do not have any hopes or desires. They go where the wind goes.
Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu
Love. Nature. WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings,
Wandering Singers Poem Analysis
Nature. WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, A. Through echoing forest and echoing street, A. With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, B. All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, C. The laughter and beauty of women long dead; C. The sword of old battles, the crown of old ...
Sarojini Naidu
Wandering Singers Lyrics. WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred ...
Wandering Singers
Wandering Singers. by Sarojini Naidu. WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead;
Wandering Singers, by Sarojini Naidu
Wandering Singers. Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old ...
Poet Seers » Wandering Singers
Wandering Singers. Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old ...
Wandering Singers, by Sarojini Naidu
"Wandering Singers" is reprinted from The Golden Threshold.Sarojini Naidu. New York: John Lane Company, 1916.
Wandering Singers
Sarojini Naidu, the poet, freedom fighter and patriot was also known by the sobriquet The Nightingale of India. She was a sensitive poet and wrote poetry based on the beauty of simple joys and sorrows of life. ... The poem "Wandering Singers" by Sarojini Naidu is about a band of folk singers who wander from town to town and from village to ...
Wandering Singers
Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu. WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the ...
Sarojini Naidu
The poem "Wandering Singers" by Sarojini Naidu portrays a group of wandering singers who travel freely wherever the wind calls them. The main theme of the poem is the nomadic nature of the wandering singers and their connection to the world around them. The poem celebrates their itinerant lifestyle, emphasizing their sense of belonging to a ...
Wandering Singers poem
WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things.
Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu
A brief insight into the lives of the Wandering Nomads / Folk Singers of India as seen through the eyes of the poet Sarojini Naidu. This video covers -A few ...
» Summary of Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu
The poem "Wandering Singers" by Sarojini Naidu is about the band of folk singers who wander from town to town and from village to village to spread the message of love through their singing. They play the lute; a musical instrument as they roam from place to place. The voice of the wind symbolizes the welcoming tone of the song that echoes ...
Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu
Theme:The song is about the band of folk singers who wander from town to town and from village to village to spread the message of love through their singing...
Poem: Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu
WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things.
Wandering Singers
Just read "Wandering Singers" and wow, what a journey! The emotion behind every line really resonated with me. This poem speaks to the traveler in all of us, the longing for both the thrill of new experiences yet a connection to something familiar too. "The world is our home" is such a powerful phrase. Beautifully written!
Poem Wandering Singers: Summary and Critical Appreciation
The poem entitled Wandering Singers is a charming lyric. This poem is one of the poems in the "Folk - Song" section of The Golden Threshold. It is a twelve - line song which breathes an air of buoyancy, carefreeness, of abandon and release. It is set to the tune of the songs sung by the bauls or bards or wandering singers of India.
Wandering Singers Poem Summary
The poem is about the band of folk singers who wander from towns to towns and from village to village to spread the message of love through their singing. The wandering singers have no fixed abode. They are forever on the road, leading to ever new places by the voice of the wind. Whether they are travelling through streets or forests, the ...
Wandering Singers By Sarojini Naidu
Available Answers. 1. Say whether these statements are true (T) or not true (NT). Change the not true statements to true. The wandering singers stay and sing at each place for some time. They sing in the street but not in the forest. They do not make plans about where to go first, where next, and so on. 2.
What is the central theme of the poem wandering singers?
The other theme which we find in this poem is the uselessness of worldly things and the desire for achieving them. In the poem, the wandering singers sing about "cities whose lustre is shed" which means all these worldly things do not live forever. One day their glory is bound to go. Those who desire for worldly things become greedy.
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen, who wrote some of the best British poetry on World War I, composed nearly all of his poems in slightly over a year, from August 1917 to September 1918. In November 1918 he was killed in action at the age of 25, one week before the Armistice. Only five poems were published in his lifetime—three in the Nation and two that appeared anonymously in the Hydra, a journal he edited in ...
Taylor Swift's 'The Tortured Poets Department' Review
Even by Swiftian standards, she gets wildly ambitious with her songwriting here.This is an album that begins with an introductory poem by Stevie Nicks.The title song's chorus goes, "You're ...
Jorie Graham's Poetry of the Earth and Humanity, Set to Music
"Music for New Bodies," premiering Saturday at Rice University in Houston, sets Jorie Graham's poetry to music with a chamber group of instruments and electronics, as well as five vocalists.
Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets' is written in blood
On Taylor Swift's 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, her artistry is tangled up in the details of her private life and her deployment of celebrity.But Swift's lack of concern about whether ...
OK, she's worth $1 billion, but can Taylor Swift write poetry
Taylor Swift's new album, "The Tortured Poets Department," will be released on April 19. In advance, we asked poets what they think of the pop star's wordsmithing.
Taylor Swift's 'The Tortured Poets Department' Arrives
"The Tortured Poets Department" — don't even ask about the missing apostrophe — arrived accompanied by a poem written by Stevie Nicks that begins, "He was in love with her/Or at least ...
Experts on Taylor Swift's poetry in 'The Tortured Poets Department
Professor Elizabeth Scala, who teaches a course on Swift's songbook at the University of Texas at Austin, says "there is something poetical about the way she writes," adding that her work on "The Tortured Poets Department" references a time before print technology when people sang poems. "In the earliest stages of English poetry, they were inseparable," she says.

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