Lana Del Rey - Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass [Review]

Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass is American indie pop musician Lana Del Rey's debut poetry anthology, and it has been long awaited for by fans. Del Rey first made the announcement that she was planning to release a poetry book well over a year ago if memory serves me properly, and it had honestly gotten to a point at which (at least for me) I had sort of given up on the idea that it was ever actually going to happen. Fortunately, however, it did, and with Del Rey being not only a poet but also a musician (which, in my opinion, go hand-in-hand anyway since she writes the lyrics of her own songs), it would make sense that she would release the poetry not only as a book but also as an audiobook. I personally think of this as not just an audiobook but as a spoken word album, and that's probably in large part because of Lana, as I said, being a musician. It should also be noted that even though, as I said, this is technically an audiobook, it is not the entire experience and should not be listened to instead of reading the book but should rather be listened to in addition to reading the book, especially if, like myself, you are a big fan of Lana Del Rey. I say that because (a) the book features beautiful photography that is very much part of the experience and (b) this audiobook is technically abridged. The poems that are featured are featured in their entirety, but not all poems are featured. Several poems such as "In the Hills of Benedict Canyon," "Sugarfish," "Ringtone," "In the Flats of Melrose," and so forth are missing from the audiobook which is another reason why I see it more as a spoken word album than I do an audiobook. The album is even technically co-written with Jack Antonoff (with whom Lana also worked on her last album Norman Fucking Rockwell!, which I reviewed here), for even though all of the words are Lana's words, the tracks feature quiet piano pieces underneath Lana's soft spoken vocals, piano pieces written by Antonoff. Interestingly, however, the audio quality of her vocals changes track to track, and some tracks sound as if they were recorded with not much more than a voice recording app on a phone. I kind of like that rawness, however; I think that it suits the poetry and the project really well.

The book version of Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass opens with its namesake, but the tracks featured on the audiobook version are not featured in the same order, and the album opens with "LA Who Am I to Love You?." I believe that this is the first one that I heard because, for some reason, this track was released to music streaming and downloading platforms several months ago but was soon after deleted. It's almost as if Lana and/or the record label had originally planned to sell the audiobook as an album but then later changed their minds, and I have seen some Lana Del Rey fans express frustration over it being treated as an audiobook on streaming platforms because when you purchase it as an audiobook from Apple, it is apparently one large file rather than an album broken up into tracks, but I fortunately have not encountered this problem because I purchased it on CD. Anyway, moving back to discussion of the content, I immediately fell in love with "LA Who Am I to Love You?," and it is one of my two favorite poems from Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass. Del Rey, in her music, frequently sings about leaving New York City (where she is essentially from) and moving to California (which she did several years ago). In this poem, Del Rey personifies California, addressing it almost as a lover. "I can't sleep without you," she says to Los Angeles. "No one's ever held me like you, not quite tightly, but certainly, I feel your body next to me, smoking next to me, vaping lightly next to me..." She paints herself as a wanderer, an orphan, looking for a home and wanting that home to be Los Angeles but feeling like she doesn't deserve it: "...I don't deserve you, not you at your best and your splendor with towering eucalyptus trees that sway in my dominion, not you at your worst, totally on fire - unlivable, unbreathable." This is of course in reference to the California wildfires of 2018 to which she also alludes in "The greatest" (my favorite song from Norman Fucking Rockwell!). The poem is absolutely beautiful and eloquent, and, as I said, it's one of my favorites from Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass.

The second track on Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass is "The Land of 1000 Fires," which follows up on "LA Who Am I to Love You?" pretty well because it follows up on the aforementioned wildfires. "Everything's burnt here," she laments in the second stanza of the poem. "There's no escaping it. The air is fried and on fire." I am once again reminded of "The greatest" in which she sings, "LA's in flames; it's getting hot." The third track is the title track which, as I stated before, opens the actual book. It's short and simple at only sixteen lines and the track running at just over a minute. It's kind of a narrative poem in that it tells a pretty straightforward story. The speaker attends a party with a set plan for how she intends her night to pan out. She then sees a young girl named Violet, however, arched backwards over the grass with dandelions in her hand, and this girl and her apparent carefree spirit inspire the speaker to stop being so meticulous about making plans: "...and in that moment," she says at the very end of the poem, "I decided to do nothing about everything." I absolutely love the rhythmic sound of the poem as Lana reads it aloud, especially near the end when she says, "...Seven years old with dandelions grasped tightly in her hand, arched like a bridge in a fallen handstand, grinning wildly like a madman..." Even the title of the poem is absolutely beautiful and rolls off your tongue in such a lovely way, so I can totally understand why Del Rey decided to name the entire book / spoken word album after it. "Never to Heaven" is another highlight that is, funnily enough, contradictory to an outtake from her Ultraviolence album titled "Yes to Heaven." In the poem "Never to Heaven," Del Rey speaks of wanting to be grounded and to not allow her dreams to get carried away. She wants to be able to appreciate what she has: "May I never go where angels fear to tread so as to have to ask for answers in the sky. The whys in this lifetime I've found are inconsequential compared to the magic of the nowness..."

"SportCruiser" is my favorite poem from Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass, with "LA Who Am I to Love You?" being my second favorite. It tells a story of how Del Rey took a flying lesson: "...I was slow to lean the sports cruiser into a right hand upward turn," she narrates, "scared, scared that I would lose control of the plane." She goes on to say that, as a consequence, the flight instructor told her that she didn't trust herself, and even though she knew that he was referring to her flying ability, she took it to heart as a sign of something greater. "I could've said something, but I was quiet," she says, "because pilots aren't like poets; they don't make metaphors between life and the sky." Del Rey says that she also decided to take sailing lessons, and in a turn that indicates that she herself is the speaker of the poem, she writes, "I signed up for the class as Elizabeth Grant, and nobody blinked an eye." This poem is very much about discovering your identity, and Elizabeth Grant is actually Lana Del Rey's actual name. During her sailing lesson, she incorrectly guesses where the wind is coming from, and when her sailing instructor doesn't say that she doesn't trust herself, she says it herself. "He laughed gentler than the pilot," she explains, "but still not realizing that my failure in the exercise was hitting me at a much deeper level. 'It's not that you don't trust yourself,' he said. 'It's simply that you're not a captain. It isn't what you do.'" One of the reasons why I love this poem is because of how it demonstrates parallels, such as when, in reference to the sailing instructor, she writes, "...a tiny bit of deeper trust also began to grow within myself. I thought of mentioning it, but I didn't because captains aren't like poets; they don't make metaphors between sea and sky." My absolute favorite part of "SportCruiser," however, is at the very end when the speaker realizes what all of these lessons have ultimately taught her: "I'm not a captain, I'm not a pilot. I write! I write." The entire poem is essentially a metaphor for a journey toward discovering your true self, and I think that this poem especially demonstrates how Lana sees herself - before all else (before, perhaps, even being a musician), she is a writer.

I really enjoy "Tessa DiPietro" because it is about something with which I strongly connect - metaphysics. Yet another narrative poem, this poem tells the story of a metaphysical healer named Tessa DiPietro whom Lana sees due to a recommendation received by a medium. DiPietro tells the speaker that the speaker's "number one problem was that my field was untrusting," which calls back to her realization in "SportCruiser" that she does not trust herself. She goes on to envision herself at a The Doors concert (even though frontman Jim Morrison passed long before Del Rey was even born), and I love her use of humor near the end of the poem when DiPietro tells her, "'Oh, and Jim died at 27, so find another frame of reference when you're referencing heaven, and have you ever read the lyrics to 'People Are Strange'? He made no sense!'" It really makes me laugh, and it is one of the few spots in the book / on the album that feature such humor which is why it really stands out to me. In "Happy," Lana reflects on her wealth, noting that while she is financially wealthy, she's even wealthier with memories of love and loss: "They write that I'm rich, and I am but not how they think. I have a safe I call the boyfriend box and, in it, every saved receipt, every movie theater ticket just to remind me of all the things I've loved and lost and loved again..." The poem examines happiness and what it means to be truly happy, which she also does on the following track, "My Bedroom Is a Sacred Place Now - There Are Children at the Foot of My Bed." This poem touches upon the freedom and happiness that she experiences after a realization: "I let you know that I knew the true nature of your heart, that it was evil and that it convinced me that darkness was real... and that monsters don't always know that they're monsters." She gives an example of why this person is evil, painting them as someone who gaslit her: "...after you left and burnt the house down, you tried to convince me that it was I who was holding the matches."

I love how Lana sums all of that up in "My Bedroom Is a Sacred Place Now..." by once again affirming her (newfound?) identity as a poet: "The more I step into my poetry, the less I will fall into being with you. The more I step into my poetry, the less I will fall into bed with you." I also love how, on the audio recording of this poem, she says this last part very softly as if she is repeating a mantra to herself, and I vehemently relate to what she says here because I published a poetry book myself last year, and it was a very therapeutic experience for me - both writing it and publishing it - that helped me make sense of and move past my own heartbreak that occurred several years ago. I also adore "Paradise Is Very Fragile," the penultimate track on the album, because of how socially and culturally conscious that it is. Donald Trump, by far the most immature and most unprofessional president that the United States has ever had, won the presidential election in 2016, and Del Rey addresses this: "Our leader is a megalomaniac," she declares, "and we've seen that before but never 'cause it was what the country deserved." By this, she most likely means that voters who voted for Trump knew exactly how awful that he was (which is a fact, not an opinion) and voted for him anyway. I wouldn't say that Americans who voted against him deserved the madness that has been wrought upon us the last four years, but those who have supported him and continue to do so definitely do. She also once again touches upon climate change and the natural disasters that it has been causing such as the wildfires in California: "Back in Los Angeles, things aren't looking much better. My treehouse that'd been standing for 80 years succumbed to the woolsy fire." As the title of it suggests, the poem is about how elusive the idea of paradise is, something that she similarly addresses on the Norman Fucking Rockwell! track "Happiness is a butterfly." We can be at peace and be happy, but all it takes is one bad event to pull that out from under us. Look at 2020 - this entire year has been an absolute disaster in so many ways, primarily because of one virus.

The audio version of Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass closes with "Bare Feet on Linoleum." It isn't really a standout for me and quite honestly feels like a strange way to end the album. One aspect of "Bare Feet on Linoleum" that is kind of cool, however, is the fact that the instrumentation features a combination of male voices and female voices speaking rather incoherently; they sound a bit like televisions on in the background. Lana, as she has done before on tracks such as Norman Fucking Rockwell!'s "hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it," empathizes with fallen icons such as Sylvia Plath: "Stay on your path, Sylvia Plath. Don't fall away like all the others. Don't take all your secrets alone to your watery grave about lovers..." Interestingly, Plath committed suicide via gas inhalation, but Virginia Woolf's suicide did involve water as she drowned herself, so the second half of this statement could be intended to be a reference to Woolf. Over the years, the media has repeatedly been unjustly unkind to Del Rey, saying that her embracing of vintage music and culture is inauthentic and even somewhat recently twisting an Instagram post out of context and inappropriately referring to her as racist (despite her repeated condemnation of the likes of Donald Trump). Del Rey addressed this treatment in past songs such as "Brooklyn Baby" and "God Knows I Tried," and she also does it here: "...told the townspeople I was crazy, and the lies, they started to believe them." I overall absolutely adore Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass, and it was well worth the wait. Lana is a very gifted poet, which comes as absolutely no surprise to me because she is a gifted lyricist which isn't much different. Some of the poems featured on Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass are, in fact, so deep and complex that I sort of had to graze over them in this review, and some I even regrettably felt the need to skip over altogether. As I said, she is such a gifted poet that discussing everything would result in a very, very lengthy review, but I hope for more poetry from Del Rey in the future!