Leonard Cohen famous songwriter and performers, and occasional poet (though most of his songs are poetry themselves) releases his 3rd book of poetry. In a style true to Cohen, it is playful, sad, erotic, dark, humorous and provocative, and this one includes line drawings done by the artist.

Someone who wants to see inside an artist's mind, but this is not a book for those who are unfamiliar with his work and are hoping this is the bridge that will get them there– it is a scattered collection, raw, unpolished, and quite frankly – filled with poems that are at best b-side material. But for me, that was the beauty of this slim collection. Just when I thought , “Well, Leonard, I’m glad you had fun with this” another little gem pops up from the page and entices you to keep to keep reading. And there are some wonderful works in here – some of his album Ten New Songs was based off works in this collection.

People complaining about the doodles.

Artists do that: draw when they think, write when they draw, they just do that. It doesn’t detract from anything, in fact, it puts into where his brain was at – that many self portraits is likely an introspective phase. It’s hard to look yourself in the face.

As we get this glimpse into the life of a writer, poet, lyricist and artist in general, it serves as a wonderful reminder to other writers, or aspiring writers: write it down. Even the not-so-great stuff. What we see as produced material IS the great stuff, but we don’t see the numerous jottings of randomness, the stuff that went nowhere, that stuff that probably shouldn’t go anywhere and the stuff that’s just…pretty bad. Yes, Cohen has “bad” stuff, but the bad stuff needs to be formed, set aside, so that the brain can refocus on the new stuff – and you never know if the new stuff will be the gem. Besides, even within the bad stuff, sometimes one line is a gem in itself. So if you learn anything from the book, write stuff down.

If you're going to be offended by dark jokes about mortality, or sex, or if just reading about a lot of sex, this probably isn't for you.

I have never been a fan of Leonard Cohen as a singer. I have always been a fan of Leonard Cohen as a lyricist. His ability to bring phrase together in some of the most darkly humorous, heart-wrenchingly possible ways has never ceased to amaze me. Yes, the music brings a new dimension to his work; it is a rare to find a singer who can truly channel the emotion beneath the words, and I am simply just not a fan of Cohen’s voice. But his lyrics stand on their own without any accompaniment, so to ever say that Cohen is not a poet would be absurd. Though Cohen, being Cohen, says it himself:

Out of the thousands
who are known,
or who want to be known
as poets,
maybe one or two
are genuine
and the rest are fakes,
hanging around the sacred precincts
trying to look like the real thing.
Needless to say
I am one of the fakes,
and this is my story.

I kindly disagree, sir.

So while this isn’t an earth shattering book by any means, it was well worth exploring as a sort of ‘inside the writer’s head’ kind of exercise. There’s enough in here that made me laugh or made me think for one reason or another to make it worthwhile. It’s not one I’d own, I don’t think, but I don’t consider any of it time wasted.

Favourites:

A Thousand Kisses Deep (snippet – is probably worth the price of the whole book)
The autumn slipped across your skin
Got something in my eye
A light that doesn’t need to live
And doesn’t need to die
A riddle in the book of love
Obscure and obsolete
Till witness here in time and blood
A thousand kisses deep

Sorrows of the Elderly (entirety)
The old are kind/The young are hot/Love may be blind/Desire is not.

Puppets (snippet)
Puppet night/comes down to say/the epilogue/ to puppet day

The Goal (snippet)
No one to follow/and nothing to teach/except for the goal/falls short of the reach

When I Went Out (snippet)
But someone made of thread and mist
Attends her every grace
Sees more beauty than I did
When I was in his place

Others:
Nightingale
Never Mind
The Cold
A Life of Acorns

And the non-poem: The Luckiest man in the world is gorgeously open and darkly humorous. Among the zen writings of a man examining himself and the insect-world and it’s sense of life and death:

“Don’t piss on a large pine cone. It may not be a pine cone. If you are not clear about which spiders are poisonous, kill the all. Daddy longlegs is not a true spider; it actually belongs to the Serantonio crime family.”

On second thought, maybe I will put it in my collection.

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Created Dec 24, 2017 at 10:58am • Submit your own review...