I’ve been a Lana Del Rey lover since I was in the sixth grade. A die-hard fan. Can you imagine a small innocent teen jamming out to music about love and feelings through some wired earbuds? It seems like a fever dream now, but I still do it! My point is, I love everything Lana produces. Whether it be a cover photo for a magazine or a single, or a whole album: I love it. Obsessed to say the least.
Naturally, when I heard she was releasing Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, a full-blown poetry collection, I had to have it. I knew from the moment it was announced, this book was going to be a hot commodity. Once she came out with a release date, I quickly went on Amazon (thank you Prime) and preordered it. On Tuesday, Sept. 30, her lovely book arrived at my apartment and I was ready to soak it all in.
For starters, the book is visually beautiful, both inside and out. The cover itself makes me want to pick oranges and have a cottage core picnic. The pages inside are filled with stunning visuals of places and things that make you feel as though you’re there. You and Lana are living the creation of these poems together. Her emotions in these poems are reflective in the photography provided, some more melancholy and cold, others more open to interpretation. My words don’t do this book justice to be quite honest, you might just have to experience it for yourself. Besides the beautiful imagery Lana provides within the pages of this book, the poems themselves are immaculate.
The poems are written out in what seems to be a typewriter font, which is very authentic to Lana as this is also a method she chooses to write song lyrics with. There are 13 longer poems and the rest are shorter quicker reads. They’re full of intense imagery and follow themes she often has in her songs. Melancholy and a reminiscence of romance being two big ones. Motifs vary from emotions that derive from Lana’s life in LA and America as a whole, love (obviously), experiences, childhood and much more. My first impression while reading these poems was that I felt as though they were very personal. I felt like Lana was telling me secrets about her life over a cup of coffee.
There’s something so raw about the way these poems are presented. Beyond the photographs and the content within stanzas. You fully get to see her whole thought process and the way she maneuvers from one line to another, progressively drawing you in even more. She even includes the poems in their raw form, with strikes through spelling errors and the replacement of one phrase with another, handwritten of course.
This book is the embodiment of Lana Del Rey and her musical thought processes. Naturally, it is to die for aesthetically pleasing if you’re skimming through the pages. Beyond that, for Lana fans especially, this book feels like the most authentic and full representation of her you’ll ever get without meeting in person. She really meant it when she said, “What I do, I do best.”
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