Book Review: Versatile Verse, Unrestrained Refrain

by Blair E. Vandehey

Some may know it as singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey’s first spoken-word
album, each track in a honeyed legato on the wings of soft background music.
Some may not know it as Del Rey’s savior from writer’s block during her time
working on her 2019 album Norman Fucking Rockwell! when she tried her
hand at poetry without intent to put it to music for the first time. However, it is
so much more than these identities; named after the first poem she ever wrote,
Del Rey’s debut poetry collection Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass
is a glimpse into her kaleidoscopic mind, versatile in poetic form and earnest in
its admissions.

Del Rey prefaces Violet by asserting “...the spirit in which [the poems] were
written was very authentic.” As such, Violet’s works can be messy at times to
reflect Del Rey’s internal chaos, numerous poems appearing as streams of
consciousness, made most evident by frequently-omitted punctuation. “LA
Who am I to Love You?” is perhaps the most notable example. In this work, Del
Rey grapples with her fear that the personified city still has not accepted her
existence. As a result, the poem becomes an echo chamber of anxiety-ridden
thoughts strung together in run-on sentences. However, lack of punctuation
means that when she finally uses it, it underlines whatever sentiment it is coupled
with. For example, with her outburst “LA / I’m upset! / I have complaints!”,
the seemingly endless stream is violently interrupted and this pivotal moment
demands our attention – she has, for the first time in “LA,” explicitly voiced her
turmoil.

Poetry and lyricism are deeply interconnected mediums of storytelling, but
the two are especially tangled with one another in Violet; when read aloud,
readers find many elements that give the works a musical quality. Repeated
lines become akin to refrains amongst verses of verse, such as the nostalgic
account of trains running through a mysterious addressee’s cool blue eyes
bookending (as well as appearing in the middle of) “The Land of 1000 fires.”
Each time the sentiment appears, it is whittled away in its wording, but remains
an easily recognizable chorus. Del Rey slips in and out of rhythm in her works
on multiple occasions; her free verse will suddenly turn into two or more lines
with identical rhythms and a rhyme scheme. On one instance, I found myself
reading the lines, “time was stopping / moving through u. / U dictated / by what
moved u” in 4/4 time, each word on an eighth note. Sometimes, this rhythm is
not immediately recognizable when read silently, since Del Rey’s rhymes may
be hidden within lines rather than appearing more obviously at the ends.

While many of Violet’s poems are lyrical, Del Rey explores numerous other
forms of verse. Sprinkled throughout longer works are untitled pieces of 1–3
lines, the shortest being only four words, and an entire section is dedicated to her
haikus. On the lengthier flipside, her prowess in prose shines the brightest in the
collection’s longest work, “SportCruiser.” The piece reads like a passage from a
poetic memoir; stanzas take the shape of paragraphs, rhythm takes a backseat to more natural dialogue, and readers are more inclined to follow narrative events
than rhythm.

There is no doubt Del Rey poured herself into every poem, every line, even every word of Violet. However, this intimacy goes beyond just the finished product; through handwritten amendments to misspelled words, lines crossed out, and afterthoughts scribbled in the margins, Del Rey leads readers through the deeply personal process of writing the poems and, by extension, finding her voice. “Never to Heaven” and “Quiet Waiter Blue Forever,” are even repeated, with the annotated draft first, each scrawled revision inching our author closer to finding the right words (or at least the best words she can), and the final product on the following page.

Del Rey takes ‘pouring herself into every poem’ one step farther in “Paradise is Very Fragile.” On the second page of the poem, dried tear stains cause the ink of the lines to bleed around each impact zone. Del Rey could have easily published Violet without them; a reprint is all it would have taken to do so. However, presenting this physical manifestation of her woes to the world even after laying herself bare in her words creates an almost physical connectedness – a unique additional layer of intimacy – between Del Rey and her readers.

To call Del Rey’s Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass ‘naked’ is the best single-word summary; our author exposes herself fully in this unguarded collection, her vulnerability evident in each messy thought made ethereal through numerous forms of verse. Since she considered it her “debut” work of poetry, there is reason to believe that Violet will eventually come to be the first of a long legacy of Lana.