Ben Fama and Angela Cleland Break Down Lana Del Ray's New Book of Poems

"No matter your opinion of Lana, you can no longer deny her status as Poet," writes Emma Madden in VICE before turning to review Lana Del Ray's poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass (Simon & Schuster) with two poets, Ben Fama and Scottish poet Angela Cleland, "who's a little less smartphone than Ben." First, they excerpt from the book:

Excerpt One, Taken from “LA Who Am I To Love You”

LA, I'm a dreamer, but I'm from nowhere, who am I to dream?
LA, I'm upset, I have complaints, listen to me
They say I came from money and I didn't
And I didn't even have love, and it's unfair
LA, I sold my life rights for a big check and I'm upset
And now I can't sleep at night and I don't know why
Plus, I love Zach, so why did I do that when I know it won't last?

Then they ask some questions. For example:

[VICE:] What do you think works well here? What do you think falls flat?
Ben: I love her use of the poetic device "anaphora", which is repetition. She repeats LA, our collective sobriquet for Los Angeles, a nickname that evokes dreams and desperation. We hear this in her songs and in these poems. As far as what falls flat? You shouldn't ever say you came from "nowhere", because that's never true. Same for being in the "middle of nowhere". The truth is always more interesting. 
Angela: The technique Del Rey uses here of addressing the city as an estranged lover can be effective, but for me the poem leans too heavily on Del Rey’s stream of consciousness. There are a lot of ideas, some of them nice, but not enough crafting. The lines “They say I came from money … and I don’t know why” could be read as self-indulgent and as the words of a celebrity out of touch with reality, but that would be too easy. The poems here are poems of self-examination – they’re a dig at herself. Of course, if she’s “sold her life rights for a big check” she knows why she “can’t sleep at night”. On the one hand I want to say I enjoy this dig, but the next line feels superfluous, clunky and unclear. I feel like with the application of a red pen there could be something really good here.

Can you hear her voice here? What does it sound like?
Ben: Sounds like Laura Palmer went to UCLA and wrote melancholy love poems in her dorm.

Read the full double-take at VICE.