“What’s life for?”

Shortly after Leonard Cohen died, I was wandering through a Half-Price Books when I stumbled upon a couple of his books of poetry. I picked up 2006’s Book of Longing as tribute to the artist. Fortuitously, NPR’s Terry Gross recently re-released a 2006 interview with Cohen about this very book. I listened to the interview concurrently with my own reading and wrestling with the text. The context for the book that the interview provided was helpful: Cohen wrote a large chunk of Longing while living at a Zen monastery in California. On Fresh Air, he told Terry Gross that he was at the monastery not for some grand religious search or purpose, but because he met someone from the monk who seemed to be at peace with himself. That’s what Cohen wanted, so that’s where he went – the Zen monastery. (I might be getting that a little wrong but that was my takeaway – Cohen followed the example of someone who seemed to possess qualities he wanted.) 

Book of Longing is the perfect title for this collection. In these poems its apparent that Cohen is discontented in every way. He misses lovers. He is amused and saddened by his body and looks. He can’t make sense of the world in general. He misses dead friends. The book is full of Cohen’s sketches, many of which can best be described as naughty. He alludes to fans who take pity on him in some poems, so I’m sure some sketches were of recent experiences, but many could be women from his more distant memories. In his self portraits, Cohen seemed to see aging both as funny and depressing (“The old are kind./The young are hot./Love may be blind./Desire is not.” – Sorrows of the Elderly.)

While I found a handful of gems in this book, overall I didn’t like it. If someone else’s name had been on the cover, I would not have spent as much time trying to find the profundity of the verse. Based on Longing, Cohen isn’t my guy. I’ll end with one of my favorites from the book, that sums up so much of his focus:

Cheater

I cheat when I make love
She thinks it’s great
She shows me stuff
That you’d only show
to a cheater