'We are the people who are desperate beyond emotion': Lou Reed's lost poetry to be published

“We are the crystal gaze returned through the density and immensity of a berserk nation.” It’s a line that could have been written by an angry young poet from Trump’s America, but it was actually penned decades previously, by the bard of New York’s grimy rock’n’roll underbelly: Lou Reed.

A collection of the songwriter’s previously unseen poems will be published later this year, along with recordings of him performing them at St Mark’s Church, New York, in 1971 (with Allen Ginsberg in the audience). The book, entitled Do Angels Need Haircuts? and published in April, will also feature an afterword by his widow Laurie Anderson, as well as Reed’s own introductions to the poems. Of the 12 poems and short stories in the collection, only three have been published before, one as a Velvet Underground song and two in small-press poetry zines.

The line quoted above is taken from a poem entitled We Are the People, published exclusively for the first time here, along with a recording of it at the St Mark’s Church performance.


Source : theguardian