At one stage known as Canada's poet laureate of existential despair, Cohen published a number of poetry books and the classic novel Beautiful Losers during the 1960s and early 1970s. First published in 1972, this book contains 117 of his poems.



I always look for imagery and phrases from his lyrics, of which there are plenty here: The germ of his song I Left A Woman Waiting from the album Death of a Ladies' Man appears on p.5 and a line from Listening To Her Song on p.41. "There's a lot of music/on Clinton street") connects with the lyric of Famous Blue Raincoat, while the lines that appear on the cover of the album Songs of Love and Hate are here too: "They locked up a man/Who wanted to rule the world/The fools/They locked up the wrong man."



Dance on The Money is a poem about Greece and his Beat contemporaries are acknowledged in a poem about Irving Layton and Allen Ginsberg, plus there's a poem to Norma Mailer (Dear Mailer) whilst from Songs of Leonard Cohen, Suzanne of the famous lyric features in The Form of Poetry: "The whole world told me/To shut up and go home/And Suzanne took me down/To her place by the river."



I am not a literary critic, but Cohen's poetics reminds me of that of the Beats and to a lesser extent, of that of the 1960s Confessional school like Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton. I personally enjoy his written work, but not quite as much as his music. This book however, is a must for all true fans of the man and his exquisite music. My only criticism: there is no index of first lines.



Flowers for Hitler



The Energy of Slaves



Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words, and Photographs