The Swiftie and The Scholar

Finding Life’s Meaning in Epiphany

The Swiftie and The Scholar

Show Notes

We are tackling one of the most underrated tracks from Taylor Swift’s folklore album, epiphany. The poem compares past war tragedies to 2020’s pandemic, and Uncle Jerry uses the poem to teach us about Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory.

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Works Cited: Wilfred Owen Siegfried Sassoon The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner – Randall Jarrell The Angels at Hamburg – Randall Jarrell Vignette poems Rhapsody on a Windy Night – T. S. Eliot Trochees Iambs The Song of Hiawatha – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory *Death in the Afternoon – Ernest Hemingway Caesura Parallelism Synecdoche *The Things They Carried: The Classic Work of American Literature on War, Memory, and Storytelling –Tim O'Brien *Man's Search for Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent – John Milton The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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More from The Swiftie and The Scholar

Oct 22, 2026

In this episode, we are taking it back to the very beginning with Tim McGraw from Taylor Swift’s debut album. Uncle Jerry finds plenty to discuss and is charmed by hearing both young Taylor’s early poetics and her country twang.

Oct 20, 2026

Today I have something a bit different for you! I sat down with Sarah Anderson, author of Fallow, to discuss getting published, her love of short stories, how she wrote the main character of the book, and so much more. All of the books we discussed are linked below.

Oct 15, 2026

We did it! One album down, lots to go. Uncle Jerry takes us through alllllll the unifying themes, devices, questions, and more (13 to be exact) of the folklore album as a whole. Thanks for coming on this journey with us!

Oct 8, 2026

Well, guys, we’ve really stressed Uncle Jerry out with this one. He went so deep on the folklore album as a whole that this episode focuses mostly on the prologue and how it sets up this new style of storytelling, different from all her previous albums. Hope you enjoy, and we’ll see you back here next week for Part 2!

Oct 1, 2026

We’ve made it to the end of the folklore road! Join Uncle Jerry and Angela as they discuss this is me trying, where the duo finds some Typical Taylor, ambiguity, paradox, multiple meanings, and so much more. Come back for the next two weeks as we wrap-up discussion of the album as a whole.

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