Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Portrait Of The Artist As A Wise ManComment: As fans of his music will testify, Leonard Cohen has a unique gift for translating emotion into words with art and sincerity. This book consists of various poems, passages and doodles that bear all the hallmarks of classic Cohen. Anyone who has ever struggled in life with crushing disappointment may recognize Cohen's perfect verbal distillation of their pain. Others will just enjoy the humour, wisdom and frankness. Many people are put off from reading poetry because of the unintelligible abstraction that characterizes so much of the medium. This well-presented volume is the perfect antidote. The pieces vary in subject and scope, but women and growing old are recurring themes. The prevailing impression is that Leonard Cohen is very modest - especially considering the fame and adulation he has enjoyed and endured since the sixties - and that he tries to do, and be, his best. The word is "mensch".Customer Rating: Summary: Confessional poetry and writings from a wise and humorous soul ...Comment: This is Leonard Cohen. You get tongue-in-cheek self portraits dispersed amongst words that are sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, sometimes brilliant observations and sometimes self depricating honesty that reveals the always human-ness and always unique voice of this living legend of a song writer, writer and poet, Mr. Leonard Cohen.
