Lana Del Rey released the digital audio version of her poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, on July 28 and over the weekend shared a candid video for one of its entries via social media.
In the grainy clip, the singer-songwriter recites an abridged version of “Salamander” while collaborator Jack Antonoff’s sparse instrumentation plays in the background. “Get out of my blood, salamander,” she reads from a manuscript. “I can’t seem to blow off enough steam to get you out of my head/ Soul cycle you to death, run you out of my blood to San Pedro/ And yet, everywhere I go, it seems there you are/ And there I am.”
Watch Del Rey recite “Salamander” below.
Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is the first of two poetry projects Del Rey plans to release this year. Though the second, behind the iron gates – insights from an institution, doesn’t have a release date yet, she did share a piece from it — “patent leather do-over” — in May.
The poetry collection will be available physically as a hardcover and digitally via ebook on Sept. 29, with CD and LP formats releasing Oct. 2. Half of its proceeds will go to benefit Native American organizations.
