Customer Reviews

The Spice-Box of Earth (A Bantam Book, N3672)

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This is the second book of Cohen's poetry and it is filled with his unique brand of religion and sexuality, the sacred and the profane. One of the fascinating aspects of Leonard Cohen's poetry has been its elasticity and it's interesting to see how it has evolved over the years; you only have to look at the poems in THE SPICE BOX OF EARTH(1961) compared to the poems in THE ENERGY OF SLAVES(1972) to see the difference; the great thing is that they're all GOOD!(I even prefer his later, angrier, uglier "anti-poems" to those found here;THE ENERGY OF SLAVES is my favorite Cohen book.) It seems to me that Leonard Cohen has always been on a spiritual path--always changing, evolving, searching for the answers that we all look for. There are some breathtakingly lovely poems in this book. No one writes like Leonard Cohen, although I must confess that as 17 year old lad I wanted very much to write like him and tried, with less than wonderful results. All of his books are worth owning and I hope to see new editions of his earlier work re-published someday, as almost all of his early poetry books are now long out of print and selections from them can only be found in his later collected works,most notably STRANGER MUSIC.

The book was in like new condition and arrived safely. It is an awesome collection of Leonard Cohen's poetry.