Re: Leonard Cohen's last book to be published 2018

[Will Dockery]

"Mr. Spacey" wrote in message
news:58c2b55c-d249-48fd...@googlegroups.com...

On Sunday, October 8, 2017 at 11:45:39 AM UTC-4, Chafetz Chayim ha'Yehu'di
wrote:
> Alison Flood, 2017. Leonard Cohen's last book, finished 'days before his
> death', due out next year. www.TheGuardian.com, 6 October
>
> A book of Leonard Cohen’s final poems, completed in the months before his
> death and tackling “the flame and how our culture threatened its
> extinction”, according to his manager, will be published next year.
>
> Describing the collection, The Flame, as “an enormously powerful final
> chapter in Cohen’s storied literary career”, publisher Canongate said that
> the Canadian singer-songwriter had chosen and ordered the poems in the
> months before his death in November 2016. The overwhelming majority of the
> book, which will be published next October, will be new material, it
> added.
>
> Cohen, who died at the age of 82, originally focused his career on poetry,
> publishing the collections Let Us Compare Mythologies in 1956, The
> Spice-Box of Earth in 1961, and Flowers for Hitler in 1964. By the late
> 60s, he was concentrating more on music, releasing his first album, Songs
> of Leonard Cohen, in 1967.
>
> Cohen’s manager and trustee of his estate Robert Kory said that pulling
> The Flame together had been a key ambition for the singer-songwriter at
> the end of his life. “During the final months of his life, Leonard had a
> singular focus – completing this book, taken largely from his unpublished
> poems and selections from his notebooks. The flame and how our culture
> threatened its extinction was a central concern,” said Kory.
>
> “Though in declining health, Leonard died unexpectedly. Those of us who
> had the rare privilege of spending time with him during this period
> recognised that the flame burned bright within him to the very end. This
> book, finished only days before his death, reveals to all the intensity of
> his inner fire.”
>
> In an interview with the New Yorker last October, Cohen spoke of how “my
> natural thrust is to finish things that I’ve begun”, and of how he was
> getting up well before dawn to write.
>
> “I don’t dare attach myself to a spiritual strategy. I don’t dare do that.
> I’ve got some work to do. Take care of business. I am ready to die. I hope
> it’s not too uncomfortable. That’s about it for me,” he told the magazine’s
> editor David Remnick.
>
> “In a certain sense, this particular predicament is filled with many fewer
> distractions than other times in my life and actually enables me to work
> with a little more concentration and continuity than when I had duties of
> making a living, being a husband, being a father. Those distractions are
> radically diminished at this point. The only thing that mitigates against
> full production is just the condition of my body … At a certain point, if
> you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial
> challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order.”
>
> The Flame will also include an extensive selection from Cohen’s notebooks,
> which Canongate said he “kept in poetic form throughout his life”, and
> which it promised would offer “an unprecedentedly intimate look inside the
> life and mind of a singular artist and thinker”. The full lyrics of his
> final three albums, along with those he wrote for the album Blue Alert by
> his collaborator Anjani, will also be included, along with prose pieces
> and Cohen’s own illustrations.
>
> Canongate’s Francis Bickmore, who acquired UK and Commonwealth rights,
> called it “a towering final book, hulking with morbid wit and lit up with
> insight … This substantial parting work, from a great artist now gone,
> will speak to anyone who has been moved by Cohen’s unique voice.”
>
> The Flame will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the US, and
> McClelland & Stewart in Canada.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> STEPHAN PICKERING / חפץ ח"ם בן אברהם
> Torah אלילה Yehu'di Apikores / Philologia Kabbalistica Speculativa
> Researcher
> לחיות זמן רב ולשגשג...לעולם לא עוד
> THE KABBALAH FRACTALS PROJECT
>
> More Cohen... a last goodbye from the master.....

Indeed, and a good send off it is.