As a young man, Cohen’s favourite poet was perhaps Federico García Lorca; he’d later name his daughter after the doomed Spaniard. But his sense of the art stretched back thousands of years and great writing would, he knew, outlive what he saw as his own meagre contributions. “He could recite to the letter,” Adam says. “Byron, Shakespeare, Rumi, the Bible … The guy was outrageously fluent.” Cohen once said his training, and sense of vocation, went back to Robert Burns, the French troubadours, Homer and King David. Adam calls his style “mytho-romantic,” which seems as good a term as any.
