The Flame

Author(s): Leonard Cohen; Adam Cohen (Introduction by)

Poetry

The Flame is the final work from Leonard Cohen, the revered poet and musician whose fans span generations and whose work is celebrated throughout the world. Featuring poems, excerpts from his private notebooks, lyrics, and hand-drawn self-portraits, The Flame offers an unprecedentedly intimate look inside the life and mind of a singular artist.


A reckoning with a life lived deeply and passionately, with wit and panache, The Flame is a valedictory work.


"This volume contains my father's final efforts as a poet," writes Cohen's son, Adam Cohen, in his foreword. "It was what he was staying alive to do, his sole breathing purpose at the end."


Leonard Cohen died in late 2016. But "each page of paper that he blackened," in the words of his son, "was lasting evidence of a burning soul."


 

The Canadian singer songwriter died in 2016 at the age of 82 and this collection consists of unpublished poetry and prose along with his pen and ink self- portraits. As with his final album (You Want it Darker), Cohen displays philosophical acceptance towards imminent death and it quickly becomes obvious that he was as strong a poet as he was a musician. The preoccupation with fire and flame dates back at least to his first album. There is a lyric from Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), that refers to lighting a thin green candle and of course the title of his final album concludes with ‘...we kill the flame.’
The book is made up of three sections, the first contains unpublished poems selected by Cohen himself, the second, poems that became lyrics for songs and the third presents a selection of entries from his notebooks.  Leonard often remarked to his son Adam, that writing was his only solace and this well curated selection shows that before he was anything else, he was a poet. This collection displays that spectacle of skill.  Mike

45.00 NZD

Stock: 0


Add to Wishlist


Product Information

 


 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 


 

General Fields

  • : 9781786893130
  • : Canongate Books
  • : Canongate Books
  • : 0.576
  • : February 2018
  • : ---length:- '9.213'width:- '6.024'units:- Inches
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Leonard Cohen; Adam Cohen (Introduction by)
  • : Hardback
  • : 1811
  • : English
  • : 811/.54
  • : 288
  • : DCF