leonardcohenforum.com

A friend of mine has a nineteen year old son who writes poetry but has not yet published a poem. He is a great admirer of Leonard Cohen and is hoping for a writer's career. I told him about this forum and the way poetry is interpreted, criticized, and appreciated by so many people from different parts of the world: scholars, teachers, PH.D's, writers and poets, both published and unpublished. I suggested he publish his first poem here and ask the forum members what they think. All feedback and criticism would be very helpful.-lightning



(Ou sont les jeunes?)



Impassive frogs, skins stretched taut,

grey with late October,

the houses down my street

crouched, unaware of each other.



Unaware of a significant wind

and mad children igniting heaps of rattling leaves

and the desperate cry of desperate birds.



Dry, stuffed, squatting frogs.



I don't know where the children got the birds.

Certainly, there are few around my house. Oh,

there is the occasional sparrow or robin or wren,

but these were big birds.

There were several turns of parcel twine about

each bird to secure its wings and feet. It was

that particularly hard variety of twine that can't

be pulled apart but requires a knife or scissors

to be cut.

I was so lost in the ritual that I'm not sure if

it was seven or eight they burnt.



("The effluvia of festering bodies was so great

that even the Mongols avoided such places and

named them Moubaligh, City of Woe.")



Soon they grew tired of the dance

and removed the crepe-paper costumes

and said prayers and made laments.



It was a quarter-to-nine

when one bright youngster

incited the group to burn the frogs,

which they did at nine.



(Now that I think about it, the birds

must have been pigeons.)


If one of Temujin's warriors

trapped a deer to eat,

it was forbidden

to slit its throat.

The beast must be bound

and the beast's chest opened

and the heart removed

by the hunter's hand.

! WHAT the...???!!! This is a joke...right?

And that, I take it, would be an expression of an overwhelmingly positive response to this poem.
I, at least, am rather overwhelmed.. It's a great poem

I'd like to comment on it more extensively later - for now, I'm just pleased

~Taigaku

As I know you know, Lightning, my heart breaks to read of such ritualistic cruelty. The innocent creatures' screams and laments go unheard by children, deafened to the sanctity and preciousness of life [and the gift that the non-human world is to this world], perhaps by their own blinding need for acceptance. It's very difficult reading such graphic description of torture. I think of "Winged Migration," as well as my love for all of the animal world. Your friend's son has an innate ability for bringing an alternative reality to painful life for the reader. Extremely effective descriptions, i.e. his entire first verse, as just a beginning, i.e. the frogs and the houses paralleled in their impassive unawareness. I don't really have time to say more, but he writes extremely well. I hope he'll make himself known as being this writer, if he should end up coming here himself.

~ Elizabeth

It didn't really occur to me to comment on the cruelty...
Since it is a poem, I was not concerned with the facticity of it, but regarded it as fiction. (It kind of has a short story feel to it..)

~Taigaku

You may be right, Taigaku.....however, it certainly came through to me as being a recounting of childhood experience and witnessing. Processing these kinds of memories through poetic expression would certainly be understandable. If not the case at all, then certainly the most vivid of imaginations does this young man have, or a lot of reading he has done. I pray that your vision is right, my vision is wrong.

Perhaps my perspective of it as being real, comes from there being any number of Satanic cults in the general region where I live, and animal sacrifice is, unfortunately, common. The Humane Society will not allow any black cats to be bought from them for the entire month preceding Halloween. There is also an equally-dangerous period of approximately one week that follows Halloween. I keep my own in the house for the week preceding, and the week following.

At first I wondered about the repetition of the word "desperate" with "the desperate cry of desperate birds." After I continued through the poem, and saw what was being described, I felt the repetition to be very effective. The bitter irony of "and said prayers and made laments" is wrenching, as well.

~ Lizzytysh

I read the first verse as a description of the houses being like frogs, ie no actual frogs present. This made me think that the children later burned the houses. Like Elizabeth, I was uncomfortable with the subject matter of the poem. I found it unpleasant and confusing, but it read like a 'real' poem. There was an echo of 'The Cuckold's Song' about it, but I can't pin down the cause.

lightning

the poem is called Halloween Poem, written by Leonard himself. It's in his very first book, Let us compare mythologies. Maybe he was about 19 himself when he wrote it.

I'm surprised no one recognised it

WOW!!! Great joke!!! It’s a very good method when one would like to get an unprejudiced opinion!

We'll give Makera the benefit of the doubt shall we and asume that she immediately recognised it? Otherwise, "ooooooooooops"

At best, one must divide the response in two, Byron ~ pre-edit and post-edit . Even so, pre-edit capital-lettered shock and disbelief, led by exclamation mark and followed by question and exclamation marks, the common phrase being, "WHAT the H*ll???!!!" ~ does not indicate simple knowledge of source, and understanding of the "Prank." Post-edit, facial-shock, and disbelief in the seriousness of the posting with its request for serious commentary and analysis ~ does not indicate mere knowledge of source, and understanding of the "Prank." With literary credentials and expertise long out of the closet, the coup of still another "exposure" would have been aphrodisiacal, as drugs are to an addict. "Poor" Margaret would never have made it to the starting line, much less finished First .

Well, back to the poem, with some of the poems/stories I've read [written by Leonard], he has certainly employed an imagination that goes beyond the pale at times [as this one does]. I don't have the book, Let Us Compare Mythologies, so it didn't even seem familiar to me. One is definitely forced to look back and review their own comments, once knowing Leonard is the author. I know I sure did ! Geez, I hope this was written from out of his fertile imagination, and not a real-life experiencing as a child . Kinda wish now that we had, had the time [or at least, speaking for myself, that I had, had the time] to go further into commenting on it, and giving our views and critiques ~ [prior to learning of its source, that is ]. As for the "Prank" aspect, I hadn't yet gotten past, "Well, that's a mild term for these horrendous activities!"

Thanks for the information, Margaret! Way to go, Lightning . I love your own Halloween humour ~ but the content of this poem ! Quite "appropriately" Halloween-ghoulish. Exactly, Helven.....coming to it with no preconceived notions turns out to have been very interesting.

Love,
Lizzy

Sneaky, Lightning No wonder it reminded me of one of Leonard's other poems Ah well, it wasn't the first time Leonard has had me confused and uncomfortable, and I don't suppose it will be the last

Good Grief! What kind of fans are you? That's one of his most notable early poems. The depth of your ignorance about Leonard's work is astonishing, Lizzytysh...considering your 24-hr-a-day obsession with him.

It's obvious to anyone who doesn't have a past history of dissing Makera that she "got it." I hope you (L and B) are not going to drag your feud with her all over the forum. Try to contain it to one thread please. It's very unpleasant to be reading a thread and have it interjected into the subject matter.

Actually this poem was Leonard's literary debut, the first poem he ever published, that's why it interested me. Initially it appeared in a Canadian literary magazine called "Civ/N" in 1953 according to the Polish Leonard Cohen Site, in 1954 according to the bibliography of "Prophet of the Heart." He would have been 19 or 20. It was titled "An Halloween Poem to Delight My Younger Friends" by Leonard Norman Cohen. It was retitled for "Let Us Compare Mythologies." The title is probably ironic as it seems to me he is saying the gratuitous cruelty of these children even outstrips the cruelty of Genghis Khan and the bloody, ruthless Mongols who killed for food (with stipulations about how to do it), and for territory. However it did seem to fascinate the young poet.
"Halloween....is a bonfire holiday and a harvest holiday, incorporating the ideas of harvesting both the fruits of the earth and the souls of the dead." Erica Jong, "Witches."
Thank you all for your astute and intelligent comments and criticisms. Hope you enjoyed the prank and Happy Halloween. Only wish it had lasted longer so we could have gotten more untainted opinions.

Midnight~ Thank you; the 'prank' of the "Prank"...indeed!