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Book of Longing |
Author: Leonard Cohen
Published: 2006-05-01 |
List price: $24.95
Our price: $18.01
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As of: January 07th, 2009 07:47:11 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 A gift of creativity by Leonard Cohen; even his drawings are delightful! I found another special book
whose title comes from "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen and well worth the read: That's How the Light Gets In: Memoir of a Psychiatrist by Susan Rako, M.D. Fans of Cohen will recognize "There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Rako, a near-contemporary of Leonard Cohen, has given us a remarkably candid and fascinating memoir -- notably well-written and a great read. The writing just flows.
This is what poetry is all about
Leonard Cohen heads an elite class of poets/singer-songwriters. I don't like everything Leonard Cohen writes, but almost everything. When he's on, nobody does it any better. Nobody. And he may be getting older (aren't we all) but he still has all the melancholy and pent up feelings you can handle. His "Thousand Kisses Deep" is truly fantastic. Such imagery. Such passion. His poems explore religion, isolation, sexuality. His five years in seclusion as a Zen buddhist monk just helped Leonard focus his raw talent to better effect. This collection will delight the poetic heart.
A Long Time Coming For Modern Poetry
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
Nothing short of brilliant.
I love this book, I sent it to a friend and she loved it too. Much of it is peppered with little Zen-like Buddhist concepts, if you're into eastern schools of thought, you will get a lot out of this book. Nothing like a lovesick Buddhist, right?
Words Cannot Describe
The Magnificent Talent of Leonard Cohen!
This Book is Beautiful & Magnificent in every Aspect!
One is in Awe with every page.
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