“If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose, among the only ones who live beyond the grave in this world — the people who write books that help, make exquisite music, carve statues, paint pictures and work for others.” – Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost
Gene Stratton-Porter was Indiana’s most widely read female author, with a catalogue of more than 21 works, including 12 novels, seven nature books and two poetry books, along with many children’s books and magazine articles. She was also a conservationist, photographer, movie producer and illustrator.
A woman ahead of her time, many of her stories centered around Limberlost State Historic Site, a dreamy swampland where she lived and wrote her most famous works.
Taylor Swift, another celebrated writer of her generation, has a discography of nearly 300 songs and counting, all of which she wrote herself or co-wrote. An icon in her own right, Swift’s fans have praised her skills as a lyricist. Swift has also played nine times in the Hoosier state — she even kicked off her debut tour, The Fearless Tour, in Indianapolis.
Both writers have become known for the emotion and poetry present in their work.
We quizzed Tiffany Parker, northern regional director and site manager at the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site, to see if she could tell who wrote which lines: Taylor Swift or Gene Stratton-Porter?
Baby, let the games begin! Play along and check your answers in the key below.
- “You have to fight and make a scandal to get in the papers.”
- “My spine split from carrying us up the hill.”
- “And I was catching my breath, barefoot in the wildest winter.”
- “Did the twin flame bruise paint you blue?”
- “I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet.”
- “It makes a regular battlefield of the human heart, this struggle for self expression.”
- “Being dead was one thing, getting ready for a wedding another.”
- “The wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay.”
- “She prayed in broken exclamations that did not sound reverent.
- “I shake it off, I shake it off.”
ANSWER KEY
- Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost
- Taylor Swift – “So Long, London”
- Taylor Swift, “evermore”
- Taylor Swift, “All Too Well”
- Taylor Swift, “the lakes”
- Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost
- Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie
- Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost
- Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost
- Taylor Swift, “Shake It Off”
