- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: McClelland & Stewart; 1 edition (April 25 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0771022344
- ISBN-13: 978-0771022340
- Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 14.7 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 454 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #112,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Renowned singer-songwriter Cohen also boasts a reputation as a writer for the printed page, especially in his native Canada. This capacious collection (his first since 1993's Stranger Music) compiles musings, jottings, quatrains, brief lyrics, prose meditations and offhand epigrams, along with Cohen's ink drawings and work in his own handwriting. The melancholy Cohen displays both a surface humility and an underlying self-confidence as he reflects on women (as when recalling his seduction of "the most beautiful girl/ on the religious left"), Zen doctrine, his own advancing age (Cohen turned 70 two years ago) and the legacy of the '60s. Many poems feel like his song lyrics: "Sometimes just a list/ Of my events/ Is holier than the Bill of Rights/ And more intense." The volume will get a boost from Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, a documentary scheduled for theatrical release. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Review
“[Book of Longing] is not so much an illustrated collection of poems as it is a shaped autobiography.”
— Globe and Mail
“It reaffirms Cohen’s mastery in the domain of desire, and devotees will not be disappointed.”
— Austin Chronicle
“Tenderness may have replaced passion, but Cohen’s ability to capture this shift makes it poignant and meaningful. . . . Cohen has taken what his friend Irving Layton called ‘the inescapable lousiness of growing old’ and has given it, in its waning days, a profound romantic dignity.”
— Montreal Gazette
“He’s shown an uncanny knack for expressing the changing Zeitgeist.”
— Toronto Star
From the Trade Paperback edition.
— Globe and Mail
“It reaffirms Cohen’s mastery in the domain of desire, and devotees will not be disappointed.”
— Austin Chronicle
“Tenderness may have replaced passion, but Cohen’s ability to capture this shift makes it poignant and meaningful. . . . Cohen has taken what his friend Irving Layton called ‘the inescapable lousiness of growing old’ and has given it, in its waning days, a profound romantic dignity.”
— Montreal Gazette
“He’s shown an uncanny knack for expressing the changing Zeitgeist.”
— Toronto Star
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (35 customer reviews)
102 of 105 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Action and Contemplation, Cigarettes and Asceticism, Clutching Fast and Letting Go, May 31 2006
By Lightman - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Book of Longing (Hardcover)
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
69 of 70 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Confessional poetry and writings from a wise and humorous soul...., May 30 2006
By Laurie Eckhout - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Book of Longing (Hardcover)
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
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Book of Longing, by Leonard Cohen, Mar 8 2007
By Anne Simone - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Book of Longing (Hardcover)
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.
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