Juan Diego Marroquin, “The Musicality of Words in the Velvet Underground’s The Gift”, Outside Topic 5, entry 10

When we initiated our unit on poetry, we spoke of the inherent musicality of words and how they enhance the meaning and connotations of words. This brought to mind the Velvet Underground’s spoken word piece, The Gift. The Gift is an absurd story of a lonely man who misses his girlfriend, presently far away. He decides to mail himself to her, but she accidentally stabs him through the head while she attempted to open the cardboard box he had placed himself in. Not only did the accompanying staticky music help to create a feeling of absurdity and irony to the story, but the musicality in John Cale’s recitation also added an extra dimension to it. His Welsh accent, the simple but precise manner in which he read the story, the way in which the notes of his voice rose and descnded- all this helped to illustrate the dark irony and humor of the story. If anybody else had read this story, it would definitely have had a different tone and possibly a different meaning. What were we supposed to feel? Amusement? Or terror? Clearly, the Velvet underground sought amusement.