by Kaye Boss

Created on: April 25, 2009   Last Updated: April 27, 2009

"Nothing to follow and nothing to teach, except that the goal falls short of the reach" - "The Goal", Book of Longing (Pg 153)

Great words from a great man who can be summed up by only one word: breathtaking.

Canadian born, Leonard Cohen, nicknamed the Dark Messiah, has been creating true beauty with his words for over the past four decades. Inspiring emotions of love, lust, drunkenness, happiness and profound pain, he is a man who has created such simplistically written poems that leave even the most educated and professional literary geniuses in awe.

To truly understand who Leonard Cohen is and what he has accomplished, you must search no further than the things that have brought him his greatest recognition- his poetry. Leonard Cohen is a man who survives alone and exists completely in his words. He strings together random sentences that, spoken by another would be denied, but by this Jewish monk, they are in every sense of the word- the truth.

Writers who have not experienced Leonard Cohen's poetry would be best to purchase his most recent two books, which hold most of his poems and songs. Reading each poem, whether as short as eleven words or as long as three pages, one can feel the intensity of this man. Exploring themes of inequality, love and lust, drunkness toward life, ecstasy and sexuality, and raw human emotion, Cohen can make the most complex concepts become as clear as water.

There is much inspiration to be found in the manner in which Cohen uses his words, how he rhymes his words, and the manner in which he acts as a magician with his words. Cohen's magicianship can be noted in poems such as "The Guests" (Stranger Music, 306-307), where we can note the differences in two separate stanzas of the poem. In the first stanza Cohen writes:

"One by one the guests arrive The guests are coming through The open-hearted many The broken-hearted few"

And then, in the second last stanza, Cohen unnoticeably changes the bolded print (clearly not boldly printed in his text) and instead says:

"One by one the guests arrive The guests are coming through The broken-hearted many The open-hearted few"

Cohen's utlization of these contrasting images from the start of the poem to the end of the poem are notably ingenious. Rather than creating new imagery for the reading, he reversed what was originally stated. This concept of reverse imagery is popular in today's poetry, and was clearly mastered firstly by our literary geniuses such as Mr. Leonard Cohen, the dark messiah.

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