Let Us Compare Mythologies

Cohen Leonard

Description

First published in 1956 when he was twenty-two years old, Let Us Compare Mythologies is Leonard Cohen's first collection of poetry. It is an accomplished and passionate collection which demonstrates Cohen's remarkably assured voice, even as a young man. An unprecedented debut published to immediate acclaim, new generations of readers will now rediscover not only the early work of one of our most beloved writers, but poetry that resonates loudly with relevance today.

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 03 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781786896896
• Langue: English

Extrait

Leonard Cohen began his artistic career in 1956 with the publication of his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies . He went on to publish twelve more books, including two celebrated novels, and gained worldwide recognition as an iconic singer-songwriter. He released fourteen studio albums, including three in the last years of his life, when he also became one of the most acclaimed arena-performing artists in the world.
Among his numerous honours, he is the recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award 2010, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2011, the inaugural New England PEN Award for Excellence in Lyrics 2012, the 2016 Juno Awards for Song of the Year and Album of the Year, and he has been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the US Songwriters Hall of Fame. He died in November 2016.
Also by Leonard Cohen
POETRY
The Spice-Box of Earth (1961)
Flowers for Hitler (1964)
Parasites of Heaven (1966)
Selected Poems: 1956–1968 (1968)
The Energy of Slaves (1972)
Death of a Lady’s Man (1978)
Book of Mercy (1984)
Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (1993)
Book of Longing (2006)
The Flame (2018)
FICTION
The Favourite Game (1963)
Beautiful Losers (1966)

This Canons edition published in the UK in 2019 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This book was first published by Contact Press in 1956
canongate.co.uk
This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Leonard Cohen, 1956
The right of Leonard Cohen to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 688 9 eISBN 978 1 78689 689 6
Book design by Five Seventeen
To the memory of my father Nathan B. Cohen
Contents
Elegy
For Wilf and His House
The Song of the Hellenist
Prayer for Messiah
Rites
Rededication
Pioneers
The Sparrows
Item
City Christ
Song of Patience
When This American Woman
These Heroics
Folk Song
Song
Friends
Lovers
The Warrior Boats
Letter
Pagans
Song
Prayer for Sunset
Ballad
Saint Catherine Street
Ballad
Summer Night
The Flier
Had We Nothing to Prove
Satan in Westmount
Fragment of Baroque
Twilight
To I . P . L .
Poem
Halloween Poem
On Certain Incredible Nights
Jingle
The Fly
Warning
Les Vieux
Story
Saviours
Exodus
“Just The Worst Time”
Beside The Shepherd
Index of Titles
“All right” he said. “Listen,” and read again, but only one stanza this time and closed the book and laid it on the table. “She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,” McCaslin said: “Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair.”
“He’s talking about a girl,” he said.
“He had to talk about something,” McCaslin said.
The Bear , by William Faulkner
ELEGY
Do not look for him
In brittle mountain streams:
They are too cold for any god;
And do not examine the angry rivers
For shreds of his soft body
Or turn the shore stones for his blood;
But in the warm salt ocean
He is descending through cliffs
Of slow green water
And the hovering coloured fish
Kiss his snow-bruised body
And build their secret nests
In his fluttering winding-sheet.
FOR WILF AND HIS HOUSE
When young the Christians told me
how we pinned Jesus
like a lovely butterfly against the wood,
and I wept beside paintings of Calvary
at velvet wounds
and delicate twisted feet.
But he could not hang softly long,
your fighters so proud with bugles,
bending flowers with their silver stain,
and when I faced the Ark for counting,
trembling underneath the burning oil,
the meadow of running flesh turned sour
and I kissed away my gentle teachers,
warned my younger brothers.
Among the young and turning-great
of the large nations, innocent
of the spiked wish and the bright crusade,
there I could sing my heathen tears
between the summersaults and chestnut battles,
love the distant saint
who fed his arm to flies,
mourn the crushed ant
and despise the reason of the heel.