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The singer-songwriter left behind a collection of his poetry that is due to be published this April
Come this spring, a collection of unpublished poems by The Velvet Underground’s late vocalist will be released. Titled Do Angels Need Haircuts?, the collection features twelve poems and short stories with an introduction by Reed himself and an afterword by his wife, Laurie Anderson. It will be accompanied by recordings of Reed reciting two of the poems at New York’s St. Mark’s Church.
The poems are said to be written during a 6 month period in 1970, when Reed temporarily left the band and returned to working for his father’s accountancy firm in Long Island.
During the cold January of 1976, Reed published 8 of his poems in The Coldspring Journal magazine. One of his tongue-in-cheek poems, titled Dirt, mentions D.H. Lawrence.
Majoring in English at Syracuse University, literature always held a special place in Reed’s heart, and he always considered himself a poet.
His creative writing lessons came in handy with his music career. The earliest instance being when he used one of the short stories he wrote in college as the building block for The Velvet Underground song, The Gift, sequestered from the cover of an obscure novel. Another one of their songs was based on a 19th century novel by Leopold Von SacherMasoch.
Andy Warhol, one of the leading figures of the Pop Art movement, was yet another of Reed’s inspirations. He often played an unofficial role as producer when The Velvet Underground were recording.
Reed would often state during interviews that it seemed natural to him to blend the worlds of rock music and literature. He frequently said that he wanted to write a novel, so took up creative writing, but at the same time he was in a few rock n’ roll bands, so why not put the two together?
Most of his bases for coming up with the subject of a song would be inspired by something he read. For instance, the song Heroin was inspired by his readings of William S Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Selby. This comes as no surprise as Reed was famously interested in the Beat Generation and the literature it evoked.
Although he had already fallen in love and had an ongoing affair with jazz since he was a youth, the romance reached new heights in the 1950’s with his Beat influences. ‘Free Jazz’ was just as liberating for him as it was for the rest of the population, or one might say slightly more so. He fell under the spell of Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman and the like, and let them take his mind places, along with authors of the time such as Frank O’Hara and Amiri Baraka.
Lou Reed time and again prompted explosions of sentiment amongst the world at large with his music, and one should expect nothing less from his poetry. Here are a couple recordings of Reed reciting his poetry:
