Songfacts®:

• Not so much a song as a eulogy set to music, this was dedicated to the poet and essayist Delmore Schwartz, who died from a heart attack in July 1966 aged just 52. Reed studied under Schwartz at Syracuse University, and described him as "the first great person I ever met."
  
  A year after Schwartz' death, The Velvet Underground - with Reed at the helm - also paid tribute to him on their debut album with "European Son."
• Reed's then-wife Sylvia Morales is mentioned in this song ("Sylvia and I got out our Ouija board") and she also designed the album's cover art. The couple was married in 1980 and divorced in the mid-'90s.
• Like Schwartz, Reed was raised Jewish, although Reed claimed Rock 'n' Roll rather than Yahweh was his God, and this is arguably the only song in which he ever made a real connection with Judaism, although the reference to Reed and his wife Sylvia taking out a Ouija board in an apparently successful attempt to contact him won't have gone down too well with the rabbinate. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England