A fitting epitaph to Cohen

The Flame, by Leonard Cohen, Canongate Trade $45. Reviewed by Steve Walker.

The poet himself needs no introduction. For more than 50 years he has won the hearts and minds of global listeners. His death two years ago was universally mourned. Probably less well known are his published works – poetry anthologies and novels. Like his hauntingly poetic songs, they explored ideas of isolation and the complexities of relationships.

The Flame is Cohen’s last, posthumous work, edited and anthologised by himself in the final few months of his life. His son, Adam, has written an insightful and helpful introduction to the collection, his first since Book of Longing in 2006.

These lyrics of loss and longing circle around familiar ideas. Again, the pain of loss and the sacrifice of absence play a crucial role, but they are now heightened by an awareness of the proximity of death. Relationships are now more than complex: they disintegrate before our eyes.

At their best – and there are many – his poems are strikingly beautiful. Personal, heartfelt and exquisitely wrought, they are ‘‘line after line’’ that ‘‘rise from my predicament’’.

Cohen is particularly poignant on the ends of relationships. He focuses on the vulnerability of lovers and the fragility of love.

The song lyrics are strongly rhythmic, as we might expect. Certain key words, such as frozen, broken, naked, forgive, remember, fire, and flame, crop up countless times, emphasising this vulnerability, crystalising his thoughts as he reviews the relationships and loves that inspired the songs.

There is humour, too. There is one laugh-out-loud moment when he attacks the ‘‘great bogus shift of bulls... culture’’, as embodied by Kanye West: I am the Kanye West Kanye West thinks he is When he shoves your ass off the stage. The quality of the whole, however, is uneven. Cohen can be banal at times, recycling cliches, even whole phrases and, in some extreme cases, whole verses. One poem, Thanks for the Dance, even resurfaces whole later in the anthology. Repetition is a favourite technique of Cohen’s. It is often echoing, haunting, sharpening the pain of separation. At other times, however, it can be irritating. Cliche and dull phrasing blunt the edge of several poems.

The book is lavishly supplied with Cohen’s own drawings. Most of these are self-portraits. They might be interpreted as a narcissistic streak but they also offer a unique insight into the poet’s own sense of decay.

Despite these minor flaws, this collection is a fitting epitaph to a towering figure of the late 20th century.