Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Stockholm : PAN/Norstedt, 1972 ;
Description
Published to immediate acclaim in 1956 when he was twenty-two years old, this is Leonard Cohen's first book and contains poems written between the ages of fifteen and twenty.
User reviews
LibraryThing member yogipoet
i thrived on this poetry as a young romantic. i believe it's the real thing.
LibraryThing member edwinbcn
Poetry and song find their origins in the same fount. Leonard Cohen is now perhaps best known as a singer. With his song he has touched the heart of millions. The same warmth, and beauty is found in his poetry, centered around themes of love, power, and religion.
Let us compare mythologies was first
The poems in Let us compare mythologies are close to the poetry as many readers would like it. Gentle and beautiful.
Let us compare mythologies was first
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published in 1956. It contains the poetry Leonard Cohen wrote while he was a student at university. His poems are pure, elegant and profound. They can be understood by anyone who will take the time to read them, or listen. Many of the poems contain references to the natural world. Some poems are made up of repetetive elements, like a refrain, as one would expect in a song. Some of the poems contain cultural references, to the Hellenistic tradition, or religion. However, while they may mystify, they do not obfuscate the meaning of the poems.The poems in Let us compare mythologies are close to the poetry as many readers would like it. Gentle and beautiful.
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LibraryThing member KittyCunningham
This is poetry, so I'm randomly hopping around when the mood strikes me.
LibraryThing member bragan
A collection of poetry first published in 1956, before much of anybody knew who Leonard Cohen was. A lot of the themes are certainly familiar to anyone who knows his music, though: love and sex, death and loss, ache and longing, and lots of religious elements and imagery. (I have, by the way, long
While I've long been a big fan of his music, this is the first time I'd read any of his poetry... Although even to say that feels a bit wrong, as it seems ridiculous to look at any of his lyrics and think of them as anything other than poetry. Except that apparently the difference between the two is significant to me, in ways that I'm finding really interesting to contemplate now, especially as I'd already been kind of re-thinking my feelings about and relationship to poetry in general lately.
So, here's the thing I've just realized: When poetry connects for me on an intellectual and/or emotional level, it's amazing. When it doesn't immediately do that, though, it seems to trigger one of two reactions in me, albeit to widely varying degrees. Either I feel as if I've just failed some sort of test by failing to properly "get" the poem and thus feel bad and inferior, or I kind of start resenting the poet for not speaking a language people like me can understand. Or both at once. Now, with the poems in this collection, some of them I got instantly and loved (or felt like I'd been hit in the heart by, which is perhaps even better). Others were more obscure to me, though, and when I found myself starting to have one of those previously mentioned reactions to them, I suddenly realized just how huge a difference there is between that and how I react when the exact same type of thing is presented to me as a song lyric. I don't instantly get or connect to every line of Cohen's songs, either, but when I don't, it's fine. It's great, even! I feel perfectly comfortable and perfectly allowed to just feel however I want about those lines or songs, to interpret them in any way that feels meaningful to me, to let them sit in my brain indefinitely in case they maybe connect to something later, or even just to enjoy them without fully understanding them. So why don't I feel like I can do that with poetry?
Ah, but it's simple, isn't it? Somewhere along the line, I internalized the impression that anyone who writes serious poetry is supposed to be (and presumably believes they are) intellectually and culturally superior to me, declaiming their Deep Thoughts in a fancy highbrow code it's my job to decipher correctly; whereas songwriting comes with absolutely none of that there's-gonna-be-a-quiz-later high school English class baggage. And I guess it took a case of the poet and the songwriter being the same person doing essentially the same thing to snap that into focus for me (and thus hopefully to help me overcome it). So I guess I owe thanks to Leonard Cohen yet again.
Rating: The poems themselves are just enough of a mixed bag for me that maybe I should rate this lower, but between how much the best of them did for me and how useful an insight reading this provided, I could hardly give it less than an approving 4/5.
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been both confused and impressed by the way in which Leonard Cohen is pretty much the only person able to make my stubborn atheist's heart truly understand the profoundness of religious feeling on a deep and intuitive level.)While I've long been a big fan of his music, this is the first time I'd read any of his poetry... Although even to say that feels a bit wrong, as it seems ridiculous to look at any of his lyrics and think of them as anything other than poetry. Except that apparently the difference between the two is significant to me, in ways that I'm finding really interesting to contemplate now, especially as I'd already been kind of re-thinking my feelings about and relationship to poetry in general lately.
So, here's the thing I've just realized: When poetry connects for me on an intellectual and/or emotional level, it's amazing. When it doesn't immediately do that, though, it seems to trigger one of two reactions in me, albeit to widely varying degrees. Either I feel as if I've just failed some sort of test by failing to properly "get" the poem and thus feel bad and inferior, or I kind of start resenting the poet for not speaking a language people like me can understand. Or both at once. Now, with the poems in this collection, some of them I got instantly and loved (or felt like I'd been hit in the heart by, which is perhaps even better). Others were more obscure to me, though, and when I found myself starting to have one of those previously mentioned reactions to them, I suddenly realized just how huge a difference there is between that and how I react when the exact same type of thing is presented to me as a song lyric. I don't instantly get or connect to every line of Cohen's songs, either, but when I don't, it's fine. It's great, even! I feel perfectly comfortable and perfectly allowed to just feel however I want about those lines or songs, to interpret them in any way that feels meaningful to me, to let them sit in my brain indefinitely in case they maybe connect to something later, or even just to enjoy them without fully understanding them. So why don't I feel like I can do that with poetry?
Ah, but it's simple, isn't it? Somewhere along the line, I internalized the impression that anyone who writes serious poetry is supposed to be (and presumably believes they are) intellectually and culturally superior to me, declaiming their Deep Thoughts in a fancy highbrow code it's my job to decipher correctly; whereas songwriting comes with absolutely none of that there's-gonna-be-a-quiz-later high school English class baggage. And I guess it took a case of the poet and the songwriter being the same person doing essentially the same thing to snap that into focus for me (and thus hopefully to help me overcome it). So I guess I owe thanks to Leonard Cohen yet again.
Rating: The poems themselves are just enough of a mixed bag for me that maybe I should rate this lower, but between how much the best of them did for me and how useful an insight reading this provided, I could hardly give it less than an approving 4/5.
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Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1956
ISBN
911721131X / 9789117211318