Diesels on display in Frankfurt auto show despite scandal

Scandals. Recalls. Threats of bans. The diesel engine is a public enemy for many environmental activists and politicians.

FILE - In this Aug. 2, 2017 file photo Harald Krueger, CEO of German car maker BMW, Dieter Zetsche, chairman of German car maker Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz cars and Matthias Mueller, CEO of German car maker Volkswagen, from right, attend a so-called diesel summit in Berlin. (Axel Schmidt/Pool Photo via AP, file)

And yet, when the world's biggest automakers unveil new models at this year's auto show in Frankfurt, among the new electric vehicles and digitally-enhanced prototypes there will also be diesel cars.

The carmakers at the show, mainly Germany's big manufacturers, are hoping to modify diesel engines to make them cleaner rather than throw them out altogether. It's a bid for stability in an industry roiled by change.

Here's a quick look at the major themes and vehicles expected at the Frankfurt International Motor Show, which opens for journalists Tuesday and Wednesday and to the general public from Saturday through Sept. 24.

The image provided by Daimler shows the front luggage area of the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 Cabriolet with a set of two suitcases, exclusively created for the vehicle. Plenty of space has also been provided for further additions such as picnic accessories or personal items. (Daimler AG via AP)

DIESEL DILEMMA

German carmakers, which have relied heavily on diesel, have been bruised by controversy over the technology since Volkswagen's scandal, in which the company admitted to illegally rigging cars to turn off diesel emission controls when not on test stands. Subsequent investigation found that many diesels by other manufacturers met official test standards but emitted far more pollution during every day driving, often by exploiting legal loopholes that permitted them to turn off controls at certain temperatures. German carmakers are recalling some 5 million older diesel vehicles to tweak their engine control software in hopes of warding off pressure for diesel bans in some cities.

In this Aug. 29, 2017 file photo the new Porsche Cayenne is displayed during its world premiere in Stuttgart, southern Germany. Porsche is showing off the new Cayenne _ base model starting at 74,828 euros _ with two powerful six-cylinder gasoline engines at the 2017 Frankfurt Auto Show. (Sebastian Gollnow/dpa via AP)

So expect a lot of emphasis on emissions-free technology such as battery-powered cars. Daimler will show off a fully electric, compact car under its EQ brand, which represents the company's push into areas it has bundled under the acronym CASE: connected, autonomous, shared and services, and electric.

It also will unveil the Mercedes-Benz GLC F-Cell, a fuel-cell and battery plug-in hybrid that emits only water vapor. Fuel cell-powered cars are not yet a practical option for consumers, with only 33 hydrogen fuel stations in Germany, but it's one possibility for the future in which government regulation will increasingly require low-emission vehicles.

The image provided by Daimler shows smart vision EQ fort. The self-driving concept car will be presented at the Frankfurt International Motor Show. (Daimler AG via AP)

DIESEL DESPITE THAT

But diesel remains in the mix —with what automakers say are better emissions controls to meet European Union standards in which cars will be tested under real-world driving conditions, as well as on test stands. Diesels get better mileage — a big consumer issue in Europe, where fuel taxes make gasoline painfully expensive. A liter of gasoline costs 1.31 euros in Frankfurt, or $5.97 a gallon. And diesels emit less carbon dioxide, meaning they help meet regulatory limits on the greenhouse gas believed to contribute to global warming. The new T-Roc small SUV from Volkswagen, for instance, will come with three possible gasoline engines to choose from — and three diesels. Automakers "won't be shouting about it, but diesels will be part of their lineup," says Ian Fletcher, principal analyst at IHS Market.

The image provided by Daimler shows the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 Cabriolet. (Daimler AG via AP)

IHS estimates diesel's market share will fall from 49.7 percent in Europe to 46.9 percent this year, and to 32.8 percent by 2025.

Mercedes-Benz spent 3 billion euros to develop new diesels, which are already being used in its E-Class sedans.

THE HOME TEAM

Increasingly, carmakers are finding other ways to unveil new models than auto shows and that has become even more evident ahead of this year's show. Volkswagen's Porsche brand showed off its new Cayenne SUV at an extravagant event Aug. 29 with the Bohemian Symphony Orchestra Prague and dancers livestreamed from its home base in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. Automakers skipping the show this year include Fiat Chrysler's namesake Fiat and its Jeep and Alfa Romeo brands, Peugeot and its DS luxury division, plus Nissan, Infiniti and Volvo.

The photo provided by Audi shows an artist rendering of Audi A8 L. Audi's A8 four-door sedan.(Audi via AP)

Yet the Frankfurt show remains a very big deal for the home team: Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz luxury brand, Munich-based BMW AG, and Volkswagen, all of which will have giant display stands. Some 1,000 exhibitors will show off 300 premieres on 200,000 square meters of space. Chinese brands WEY and Chery will exhibit for the first time.

DIGITAL AND ELECTRIC DISRUPTION

Automakers will be eager to show off technologies that can help people get around without owning a car. That could include ordering rides through an app, sharing someone else's car for a price, and autonomous vehicles.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, will speak at the opening ceremony, while Google is a sponsor for the media night. Computer security company Kaspersky Labs and AVL Software and Functions GmbH are showing off a product to protect cars from hackers. Daimler announced Wednesday it was investing in peer-to-peer car sharing company Turo and said it plans to fold its own car sharing pilot project, Munich-based Croove, ahead of Turo's entrance into the German market in 2018.

HOT PRODUCT

The main reason to hold an auto show, of course, is to show off autos. Some of the models attracting the most industry attention will include: Audi's A8 four-door sedan with an eight-speed transmission and all-wheel drive; the eighth generation of the Rolls-Royce Phantom; and a new version of Volkswagen's Polo compact, which comes in gasoline and, yes, diesel versions.

Small SUVs remain a popular category for new vehicles. Car buyers like the higher seating position, while carmakers save development costs by putting a new body style on top of mechanical components they've already paid to develop for compact cars. They include: the SEAT Arona, Jaguar E-Pace, Kia Stonic, Citroen C3 Aircross, Skoda Karoq, and a so-far unnamed offering from Chery.

HYPERCARS

It wouldn't be an auto show without freaky fast, completely unaffordable supercars to gawk at. Daimler has the Mercedes-Benz-AMG Project ONE, a two-seat hybrid with over 1,000 horsepower and a top speed of 350 kph (217 mph.) A teaser photo shows the silhouette of a car with a low silhouette and big wheel wells.

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.

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.”

“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.”

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."

“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.

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)

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

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

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

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)

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)