Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

I've been reading Leonard Cohen since I was 13 and in love with the words "freakish nipples". In Stranger Music, I find myself presented with a feast of words by the man I crushed on from the first moment I heard his voice.My copy is dog-eared and coffee stained after years of returning to it again and again. Covering everything he's ever written in as lush a way as a volume this tightly edited will allow, everyone will find something to fall in love with in this book.Highly recommended and I'd say that even if I wasn't crazy in love with him. ;)Feith

As a man once said, "James Joyce is not dead. He's living in Montreal under the name of Leonard Cohen." Stranger Music is an amazing book. I can't stress this enough, it's poetry in action and Cohen's words sing themselves off of the page and into your mind. This is the type of stuff that stays with you. This is the type of stuff that people can live their whole lives and only hope to write. Stranger Music is an excellent book, even for people whom might otherwise be down on poetry.

Leonard Cohen is one of the best rock poets going. He has received less aclaim than some of the other rock poets like Jim Morrison, Lou Reed and Bob Dylan. That is really a shame because Cohen has produced a pretty extraordinary body of work. He published his first volume of poetry in 1956. His first album of music came out in 1967. Stranger Music is a selection of poems and lyrics from his entire career. It provides 400 pages of material. One will quickly realize that Cohen has had an amazing career. I especially like the lyrics. "The Future" is a CD that seems to find its way into my player a lot. Even though, the lyrics are on the CD sleeve, it is nice to see them in a book. One will gain an appreciation for how poetic Cohen's lyrics are. (The same is true for Dylan. There is something special about great poetic lyrics getting placed in book form.) This book also contains generous samplings of his early books like "Beautiful Losers" and "Flowers For Hitler". Cohen manages to straddle the line between emotional intensity and sheer intellectualism. This collection will allow one to examine a great, often time underlooked career. It is some of the best English language poetry of the 20th Century.

Leonard Cohen is... I cannot find a single word to describe him. He is enigmatic. He is eclectic. He is iconoclastic. He is all of these things, and many, many more. Read this book and you will understand. This book includes a wide variety of his poems throughout the years, including selections from all 8 of his original volumes of poetry (The Energy of Slaves and Death of A Lady's Man are particularly well represented), as well as poems from his first anthology, selections from his novel Beautiful Losers, and 11 previously unpublished poems. Also included are lyrics to songs from all of his wonderful albums, many of them nicely represented, including The Future, his most recent album, which has all of it's Cohen-penned lyrics included here. These are particularly convenient as Cohen's albums, sadly, have been virtually ignored by record companies and during their re-packaging onto CD most of them do not include lyrics. This is a monumental collection, over 400 pages and including several hundred poems, some of which are not available elsewhere, and almost all of which are very hard to find at any rate. This is an absolute must for a Leonard Cohen fan. He is perhaps my favorite poet, his words tug at your heartstrings like so many other poets are claimed to be able to do, but which few can. His writing has always been honest, he's not fooling anybody, and these poems and lyrics touch you deep in your soul. Cohen strikes a chord. This is masterly, masterly writing. If you are a fan of Leonard Cohen's music, then you owe it to yourself to further your experience by buying this book. I cannot give it a higher reccommendation.

"There is a mood for which Beethoven is too loud, and Bach too wise, and silence too good for a filthy heart such as beats in my breast." --It's Probably SpringAnd for all of these moods, there is Leonard Cohen. To many, Leonard Cohen is known only as a sub-mainstream musician and sometime theologian; yet the scope of his artistic genius reaches far beyond music and religious thought. Stranger Music, a collection of his works from 1956-1993, provides the uninitiated Cohen reader with a broad sampling of poetry and prose excerpts, offering everything from lucid and uplifting spirituality (a la Book of Mercy) to darker confessional stylings. Any fan of modern literature would be well advised to incorporate this anthology into his collection. At times conventional, at times avant-garde, Cohen is a writer that transcends genre and accurate definition, and in doing so probes the collective unconscious for themes which pertain to all of modern humanity. His questions, and many of his answers, all presented in his easily accessible style, are universally applicaple, and an experience well worth the reading. For any passionate-literate individual who seeks an artistic alternative to the nihilism of our time, this man speaks for you.Spend the twelve bucks. You'll congradulate yourself on the investment.