A collection of poetry first published in 1956, before much of anybody knew who Leonard Cohen was. A lot of the themes are certainly familiar to anyone who knows his music, though: love and sex, death and loss, ache and longing, and lots of religious elements and imagery. (I have, by the way, long been both confused and impressed by the way in which Leonard Cohen is pretty much the only person able to make my stubborn atheist's heart truly understand the profoundness of religious feeling on a deep and intuitive level.)

While I've long been a big fan of his music, this is the first time I'd read any of his poetry... Although even to say that feels a bit wrong, as it seems ridiculous to look at any of his lyrics and think of them as anything other than poetry. Except that apparently the difference between the two is significant to me, in ways that I'm finding really interesting to contemplate now, especially as I'd already been kind of re-thinking my feelings about and relationship to poetry in general lately.

So, here's the thing I've just realized: When poetry connects for me on an intellectual and/or emotional level, it's amazing. When it doesn't immediately do that, though, it seems to trigger one of two reactions in me, albeit to widely varying degrees. Either I feel as if I've just failed some sort of test by failing to properly "get" the poem and thus feel bad and inferior, or I kind of start resenting the poet for not speaking a language people like me can understand. Or both at once. Now, with the poems in this collection, some of them I got instantly and loved (or felt like I'd been hit in the heart by, which is perhaps even better). Others were more obscure to me, though, and when I found myself starting to have one of those previously mentioned reactions to them, I suddenly realized just how huge a difference there is between that and how I react when the exact same type of thing is presented to me as a song lyric. I don't instantly get or connect to every line of Cohen's songs, either, but when I don't, it's fine. It's great, even! I feel perfectly comfortable and perfectly allowed to just feel however I want about those lines or songs, to interpret them in any way that feels meaningful to me, to let them sit in my brain indefinitely in case they maybe connect to something later, or even just to enjoy them without fully understanding them. So why don't I feel like I can do that with poetry?

Ah, but it's simple, isn't it? Somewhere along the line, I internalized the impression that anyone who writes serious poetry is supposed to be (and presumably believes they are) intellectually and culturally superior to me, declaiming their Deep Thoughts in a fancy highbrow code it's my job to decipher correctly; whereas songwriting comes with absolutely none of that there's-gonna-be-a-quiz-later high school English class baggage. And I guess it took a case of the poet and the songwriter being the same person doing essentially the same thing to snap that into focus for me (and thus hopefully to help me overcome it). So I guess I owe thanks to Leonard Cohen yet again.

Rating: The poems themselves are just enough of a mixed bag for me that maybe I should rate this lower, but between how much the best of them did for me and how useful an insight reading this provided, I could hardly give it less than an approving 4/5. ( )

Ever listen to an audiobook and think, "Man, I really need to read this book. Why haven't I ever read this book before?"

Well, that's me. ( )

This is poetry, so I'm randomly hopping around when the mood strikes me. ( )

This is poetry, so I'm randomly hopping around when the mood strikes me. ( )

Another great collection of poetry from Leonard Cohen. This was his first, published in 1956 and comprising largely of poems he wrote as a university student. It's quite remarkable how assured they are, and how similar they are thematically to his more well-known later work, both poems and songs. One or two are a bit more obtuse than is usually to my liking, but none are poor. The more straight-forward ones like 'These Heroics', 'On Certain Incredible Nights' and 'The Fly' are the best, evoking simple, honest romantic sentiments without compromising on lyricism. This is an essential book for Cohen's fans, but then so is any of his stuff. From this debut 1956 collection right through to 2006's Book of Longing and the 2012 album Old Ideas, Cohen is always stellar. ( )