This in today's Guardian: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/7days/story/0,,1779692,00.html Leonard Cohen: A troubadour at Charles's court The lugubrious Canadian singer, beloved in bedsit land, is back on the scene with a film and a book. And now he even has royal approval Neil Spencer Sunday May 21, 2...

forget knighthood, i propose we start a campaign to get leonard beatified by the catholic church. 'st leonard cohen' sounds way better than 'sir leonard cohen'. does anyone know if the new pope's a fan?

There's a rather shaky video clip of Leonard's spoken-word section from 13/05/06 posted on YouTube.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfyMp5t8 ... 20cohen%22

I've just read the article linked above - or tried to... can anyone explain to me the meaning of, "Cohen re-members the love song, the love song, by performing the ambivalence of its multiple voicings, its polyphonic traces of supplementarity, by reading contingency with his body" ?

hi jacqueline, welcome to the forum, and as lizzy says, thanks for an exceptionally fine first post. it sounds to me like your reading of 'last year's man' is as good as anyone's. you've certainly got the meaning if the title bang-on. your comments got me thinking about this song, so in response her...

what genre is leonard cohen? death reggae, of course. possibly hardbag.

genres are silly.

hmm... wasn't someone once described as a barry white for poetry chicks?

"If It Be Your Will, on the other hand, I think that one’s a straightforward hymn."
This is actually the paraphrasing of an often used Jewish prayer.

I didn't know that, Nightstalker - do you know the name of the prayer? I'd like to look it up.

Well, Tchoc, I did read it through, but I have to admit that by the end I wasn’t quite sure what she was trying to say. There’s something about the language of a lot of contemporary Christian theology that seems vague and woolly to me – I can’t get to grips with it. You’re obviously better able to m...

Thanks for the link, Jarkko – I thought Veling kind of missed the point of ‘Hallelujah’, at least the point of ‘Hallelujah’ as I see it, but she missed it in an interesting and thought-provoking way. Veling takes the cold, broken Hallelujah to be a simple expression of pain and despair, “the cry tha...

the complexities of his sadness, the breadth of his love...

well said.

thank you!

yes! please! someone translate it! please please please!

i saw him at the end of last year, and he made a few comments about 'the guests' before he sang it - along the lines of, "i normally drop a cover after a little while, but this song's got under my skin, i think i'll be singing it till the day i die."

thanks for this, tom - it's kind of a relief to know that leonard actually does credit cavafy for 'alexandra leaving'. i didn't know about those references to the sufis, either. this is interesting stuff. if anyone remembers any other references coming up in old threads, i'd be very grateful if you ...