Book of Longing

Book of Longing is the first new poetry book by Leonard Cohen since 1984's Book of Mercy. First published in 2006 by McClelland and Stewart, Book of Longing contains 167 previously unpublished poems and drawings, mostly written at a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy in California, where Cohen lived from 1994 to 1999, and in India, which he visited regularly during the late 1990s. The book also incorporates a number of poems written after his 1978 book, Death of a Lady's Man (not to be confused with his 1977 album, Death of a Ladies' Man). These presumably were left out of his 1984 Book of Mercy, which contained only psalm-like meditations. Book of Longing also collects some of the lyrics to songs from the albums Ten New Songs (2001) and Dear Heather (2004). Many of these poems were first published at The Blackening Pages of The Leonard Cohen Files website. In 2007, the American composer Philip Glass premiered his work Book of Longing. Song Cycle Based on the Poetry and Artwork of Leonard Cohen, in which he set 23 of the book's poems to music. Some poems included Cohen's spoken word.The work was premiered at Luminato in Toronto, Canada, and was subsequently performed at various venues in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe. At the Barbican Centre in London in October 2007, Cohen joined Glass onstage for a pre-concert discussion. The double-CD was released in December 2007. (wiki) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ by William Ruhlmann In May 2006, Leonard Cohen published his first collection of poetry in 22 years, Book of Longing, having previously used some of the material as songs on his most recent albums, Ten New Songs (2001) and Dear Heather (2004). The book touched on many of the themes he had explored throughout his writing career, including spiritualism (he had spent part of his time between books as a postulant at a Buddhist monastery), eroticism, and self-deprecating humor. On June 1, 2007, at the Luminato Festival in Toronto, Ontario, composer Philip Glass premiered his song cycle based on Book of Longing, which is here given a two-CD recording. Cohen is present on the album speaking (not singing) some of his poems, and Glass also has set some of them to music, with singing by a soprano (Dominique Plaisant), a mezzo-soprano (Tara Hugo), a tenor (Will Erat), and a bass-baritone (Daniel Keeling). The obvious antecedent is Glass' 1986 album Songs from Liquid Days, which set lyrics by the likes of Paul Simon and Suzanne Vega, but perhaps a closer one is Cohen's album Death of a Ladies' Man (1977), his collaboration with Phil Spector. It's not that Book of Longing ever sounds like Death of a Ladies' Man, but the similarity lies in the mixture of two distinct styles. For better or worse, Death of a Ladies' Man sounds like what one would expect of the unlikely mixture of Cohen's droll, deep-voiced singing with Spector's elaborate production style, and Book of Longing is, as one might expect, a fusion of Cohen's poetic voice with Glass' distinctive circular rhythmic motifs. It is actually somewhat more respectful of the text than Songs from Liquid Days, although listeners still may find it odd to hear art songs in which Cohen's sometimes R-rated language is sung in a formal style by classically trained voices. These selections alternate with a series of tracks, notably "Not a Jew," "I Enjoyed the Laughter," "Don't Have the Proof," and "I Am Now Able," in which Cohen (without any musical backing) recites a very short poem either before or after a solo by an individual instrument (oboe, violin, saxophone, and cello, respectively). Fans of Ten New Songs and Dear Heather will hear some familiar phrases and references (e.g., "a thousand kisses deep" is the tag line of "You Came to Me This Morning," as it is of the song "A Thousand Kisses Deep"), although no complete song/poem has been repeated. Cohen may still be at his best as his own interpreter, but this is one of the more interesting and ambitious attempts to recast his writing in musical form.