Customer Reviews

Book of Longing

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These are just some of the themes explored by Leonard Cohen in this very excellent volume of verse.

But hold on - how do cigarettes qualify as a theme? Well perhaps they don't quite make it to the thematic level, but they do put in enough appearances to be seen as noteworthy.

Here is an excerpt from a poem entitled "The Cigarette Issue":

But what is exactly the same
is the promise, the beauty
and the salvation
of cigarettes
the little Parthenon
of an unopened pack of cigarettes

and Mumbai, like the Athens
of forty years ago
is a city to smoke in

Cohen manages to weave a smoke into his deft handling of the tension and attraction of opposites in "What Did It", which follows in its entirety...

An acquaintance told me
that the great sage
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Once offered him a cigarette,
"Thank you, sir, but I don't smoke."
"Don't smoke?" said the master,
"What's life for?"

And so it goes, dealing with life and death, love and lust, spirit and truth, and the path the author has walked in his quest for God, or G-d, as he chooses reverentially to refer to him.

While Cohen's wry humor and self deprecating detachment are at times in evidence, some verses are almost terrifying in their seriousness and immediacy. The following is from "By the Rivers Dark" which makes up the lyrics of a song by the same name on the excellent CD "Ten New Songs"...

then he struck my heart
with a deadly force
and he said, "This heart
it is not yours."

Interspersed throughout the volume is a series of self portraits of the artist as an apparently angst filled old man, juxtaposed against his arresting sketches of a number of exceedingly voluptuous women.

But in the end this is a wistful book and it is appropriate that it is entitled "Book of Longing".

Here is "Nightingale", in its entirety:

I built my house beside the wood
So I could hear you singing
And it was sweet and it was good
And love was all beginning

Fare thee well my nightingale
`Twas long ago I found you
Now all your songs of beauty fail
The forest closes `round you

The sun goes down behind a veil
`Tis now that you would call me
So rest in peace my nightingale
Beneath your branch of holly

Fare thee well my nightingale
I lived but to be near you
Though you are singing somewhere still
I can no longer hear you

This is Leonard Cohen. You get tongue-in-cheek self portraits dispersed amongst words that are sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, sometimes brilliant observations and sometimes self depricating honesty that reveals the always human-ness and always unique voice of this living legend of a song writer, writer and poet, Mr. Leonard Cohen.

This guy is Interesting with a capital "I." Reason enough to check out his long awaited book of poems, drawings and essays. Another reason is that unlike most books of poetry it is 'entertaining' without sacrificing intelligence. His wry humour is laugh out loud funny in the the short essay, "The Luckiest Man in the World" and poems such as, "Never Once."

He speaks of things that matter to him: his teacher, Roshi, pine trees, G-d, women, sex, laughter, mists, women and most of all from what I see the unending mystery of "self" (and women). When that self is Leonard Cohen it is worth stopping what you are doing and reading what he has to say.

Then, if you are not familiar with Cohen's music, you are missing some of the best written lyrics and music, ever.

Enjoy,
Laurie

For anyone who loves Leonard Cohen's music, this book is a wonderful collection of poems, drawings, images, rants, recollections and celebrations. Some of the material is in the film called Leonard Cohen/I'm Your Man, and like the songs, the book speaks of love and loss, pain and sorrow in his inimitable, elliptical style. Fun to read and easy to pick up and put down at any point.

Cohen calls himself "a competent minor poet." He's right. But minor competence these days is a supreme thing. Cohen is wry, profound, and always surprising. His humility never cloys. He means what he says, even when he's kidding. The illustrations, by the way, add much to the reader's experience.

Hmmm, I think maybe I expect too much from Leonard Cohen. This collection of poems is heartfelt, nearly perfect in its bareness. Like haiku that isn't haiku, if you see what I mean. Written by anyone else, this book would probably get a 5, but this is the guy who wrote Hallelujah and Everybody Knows. Trademarked sense of humour and ability to cut through BS is here in spades. Well worth the money.

Okay, it's a mixed bag, like most of Cohen's work - ranging from the confusing and chaotic through to the sublime. It's a bit like the curate's egg, only the other way around, in that it's mostly good, and even the bad bits are still pretty good. For me, part of the pleasure of Cohen is precisely the chaotic mass of material, from which many gems emerge, glowing into the strange half-light of Cohen's percetions and vision.
It's also filled with fundamental material for those with an interest in Cohen's life, evolving 'philosophies' and emerging opus.

Transcending the sum of his arts, The Book of Longing is a miraculous surprise, commingling poems and songs, sketches and musings, the erotic and the divine in the poignant and profound way that is Cohen's saintly and sensual signature.

Leonard Cohen's Book of Longing

Aside from being a creative genius in a multitude of artistic disciplines, Leonard Cohen is an old man. And with age comes wisdom. Take for example, this stanza from "Better."

better than art
is repulsive art
which demonstrates
better than scripture
the tiny measure
of your improvement

No dummy, this guy. But then, you knew that already.

Twenty years in the making, Book of Longing [Ecco/HarperCollins]was written on southern California's Mount Baldy and in Los Angeles, Montreal and Mumbai. The author of twelve books and seventeen albums of music, this collection of poems follows his highly acclaimed 1984 publication, Book of Mercy. Containing his own wonderful, playful and provocative line drawings, Book of Longing is a celebration of one of contemporary times' best and truest flesh-and-blood examples of unlimited artistic expression.

Leonard Cohen's poetry is loaded with Bukowski's truth and simple statements, but without the ugliness. There are tons of love poems, reflections on drinking and God (oops, I mean "G-d"--he's Jewish, you know), loneliness, philosophy, aging, friendships, food, sober highs, celebrations of the body and sex, sex, sex. But it's all done with manners--a classiness Bukowski never knew-- a masculine sensitivity that's never maudlin, and a ripe, heavy, juice-laden life that few words in print have ever had the strength to carry.

There are some moments when Cohen veers into classical meter and rhyme, but he pulls it off with the smart currency of the lyric, and yet somehow, even in the hipness, he can still manage to make the reader tear up:

And fragrant is the thought of you
The file on you complete
Except what we forgot to do
A thousand kisses deep

There is unresolved anger and hurt:

I could not kill
the way you kill
I could not hate
I tried, I failed

and

Fare thee well my nightingale
I lived but to be near you
Though you are singing somewhere still
I can no longer hear you

But mostly, in all its spiritual, physical and emotional forms, there is truth:

This is it
I'm not coming after you
I'm going to lie down for half an hour
This is it
I'm not going down
on your memory
I'm not rubbing my face in it anymore
I'm going to yawn
I'm going to stretch
I'm going to put a knitting needle
up my nose
and poke out my brain
I don't want to love you
for the rest of my life
I want your skin
to fall off my skin
I want my clamp
to release your clamp
I don't want to live
with this tongue hanging out
and another filthy song
in the place
of my baseball bat
This is it
I'm going to sleep now darling
Don't try to stop me
I'm going to sleep
I'll have a smooth face
and I'm going to drool
I'll be asleep
whether you love me or not
This is it
The New World Order
of wrinkles and bad breath
It's not going to be
like it was before
eating you
with my eyes closed
hoping you won't get up
and go away
It's going to be something else
Something worse
Something sillier
Something like this
only shorter


And when the reader gets to the last page, they know it can never be it. There is no choice but to turn back to the first page and start again.



O my love
don't you know that we have been killed
and that we died together

What a soul this man has. I have read Mr. Cohen's poetry before, and enjoyed it, yet there is something about this collection that has made it one of my favorites. I will go back to it many times. It has something to say. Highly recommended.

The vulnerabilty of the work in Book of Longing speaks to my soul, the humour makes me laugh, and the politics strengthen my spine. It sits with Shakespeare's sonnets on my living room table, within reach for spiritual nourishment