 I'm back at my desk (the end of the line)... (from early version of "The Book of Longing") Reviews & Articles 25) This Week in New York: the Insider's Guide to the City since 2001, 06.21.06 |
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riff’s Rants & Raves BOOK OF LONGING: LEONARD COHEN (Ecco, May 2006) [3.5 stars out of four] Leonard Cohen fans are in for a triple treat with BOOK OF LONGING, Cohen’s first book in thirteen years and an excellent companion to Lian Lunson’s documentary and Anjani’s album. Mixing poetry, prose, and drawings, Cohen writes about love and loss, sex and death, drugs and deities, memory and Montreal, and the power of song with an engagingly self-deprecating sense of humor. "Do not decode / these cries of mine -- / They are the road, and not the sign" he explains cryptically in "All My News." A very loose self-portrait sketch is accompanied by the words, "I believe that you are standing in the place where I am supposed to be standing." He gives a sort of mission statement in "Something from the Early Seventies," discussing art, acid, and the Chelsea Hotel. "I know you had to lie to me / I know you had to cheat / To pose all hot and high behind / The veils of sheer deceit / Our perfect porn aristocrat / So elegant and cheap / I’m old but I’m still into that / A thousand kisses deep," he writes in "Thousand Kisses Deep," which the Handsome Family performed at the Sydney tribute concert. Although most of the writings are not identified by place and year, Cohen does point out those written when he was on Mt. Baldy, where he was known as Jikan and studied with his Roshi. Perhaps this sudden Cohen media explosion is best explained in "Delay": "’I can hold in a great deal; I don’t speak / until the waters overflow their banks / and break through the dam’ / Thus I was able to delay this book well beyond the end of the 20th century.’" Retrieved from twi-ny.com / Contributed by Jarkko [Note: on this link you can read the complete article, which includes the reviews of Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man and Blue Alert ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to Reviews & Articles. Welcome | Index | Works by Leonard Cohen | Reviews & Articles | Index of Titles / drawings, first lines & online poems | e-card | Credits & Thanks |
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