In a room somewhere in Los Angeles, a woman who had stopped recording music found herself writing lines that arrived uninvited. Lana Del Rey had released Lust for Life in July 2017, then hit a creative wall so solid she abandoned the studio entirely. What came instead were long poems, arriving in her head with a persistence that surprised her. She later described feeling like a resident of the nineteenth century, visited by a muse during a period when she had no intention of making anything at all. Six years after the book that emerged from that silence, the oddity of the project still feels deliberate.
Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass began as a poetry collection, the first from the American singer. Simon & Schuster published it on September 29, 2020, after a release schedule that had become its own running joke. The book was originally slated for August 2019, positioned to arrive before Norman Fucking Rockwell! Then it moved to January 4, 2020, then February, then vanished into the same personal turbulence that had delayed everything else. More than 19 original poems, 10 haiku, and photographs filled the final volume.
Poems from a strange headspace
The poems themselves came from a strange headspace. After Lust for Life, Del Rey stopped working on music and other projects altogether. She told interviewers that long poems simply started coming to her, and that she was surprised the muse bothered visiting during a break. She felt disconnected from the present, like someone living in the nineteenth century. The lines kept arriving from somewhere she could not quite name. By the time the book was finished, she noticed her poetic skills improving with each new piece.
She felt disconnected from the present, like someone living in the nineteenth century.
Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg had shaped her reading long before she became a pop figure. Poetry was not a side quest for Del Rey; it predated the music career and informed the way she wrote lyrics. The collection's title, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, carried that literary weight. The book included 13 longer poems alongside shorter works, a structure that mirrored the uneven, associative way the material had come to her. The photographs added another layer, turning the volume into something closer to an artist's book than a standard poetry release.
The spoken word companion
The spoken word album was announced in December 2019 as a companion piece. Jack Antonoff wrote the music, which gave the project an immediate sonic identity. The original plan called for a January 2020 release, but personal problems pushed the date back. On July 9, 2020, the final dates were announced for both formats. The album arrived on July 28, 2020 through Interscope and Polydor, with the book following two months later. The gap between formats meant listeners heard the poems before readers could hold them.
The cover art appeared in April 2020, months before either release. Erika Lee Sears painted an orange tree, and that image became the face of the album. It was a strange choice for a spoken word record, warm and domestic rather than cinematic. Del Rey's voice over Antonoff's production turned the poems into something between audiobook and ambient music. The album was classified as spoken word, but the music underneath gave it a shape that pure recitation would have lacked.
Proceeds and bestseller status
Half of the book's proceeds went to the Navajo Water Project, a detail that grounded the project in something beyond self-expression. The New York Times placed the collection at number four on its bestseller list after publication. For a poetry volume from a pop star, that was a significant result. The book's commercial performance suggested that Del Rey's audience would follow her into a format with no choruses, no beats, no hooks. The poems themselves were the only thing on offer.
The album's release history mirrored the book's. Both were delayed, rescheduled, and finally locked in during the same July announcement. The spoken word record had been planned for January 2020, but personal issues intervened. When it finally appeared on July 28, 2020, the gap between announcement and release had stretched across seven months. The book, originally planned for August 2019, took even longer. The delays became part of the project's identity, a slow unwinding that matched the poems themselves.
The poems kept arriving after the book was finished. Del Rey noted that the lines continued to come from somewhere she could not fully explain. The creative crisis that had stopped her music career in 2017 had turned into a different kind of output. By 2020, she had published a book, released a spoken word album, and returned to recording. The orange tree on the cover, painted by Erika Lee Smith, remained the simplest image in the whole project. A tree, a voice, and the strange persistence of words arriving from nowhere.