Leonard Cohen and Things about Poetry

The other day, I got an email message from a friend. It was about Leonard Cohen's words I quoted to my blog. I didn't know Leonard Cohen until I heard his songs " Dance me to the end of love" and " Famous blue raincoat". I liked his lyrics first and then his deep magnetic voice. He became one of my favorite singers ever since then. That was last year. Cohen's works deal with love, religion, and complex interpersonal relationships. I spent many nights listening to " Famous blue raincoat" as if I were Leonard himself sitting on the balcony of an apartment deep into the night , totally trapped in these two typical human emotions: love and hatred. " What can I tell you, my brother, my killer, what can I possibly say? " The lyric shows the complicated feelings a man has when he finds out that his best buddy has stolen his woman. It takes human sensitiveness ---- the inner oracle of of a man's heart, where there is courage , to forgive . I think this song is typical of L. Cohen's works.

I am always into poetry, but I seldom follow a specific poet. It is bits and pieces of the language in the poems that fascinate me. Poetry surely has its effects on our society, and personally speaking, it has made me sensitive and emotional as a woman. However, I don't have theoretical views on poetry, and reading poems is merely a way of entertaining myself. I very much like what my friend says about Leonard and poetry in the email.

Here it is:

"Just a note to let you know you I check your blog daily for new entries. I very much like your poets’ thumbnail corner. Of course, it helps that L. Cohen is one of my favorite poets/songwriters/singers. I hope you continue or expand this feature of your blog and hope again that my review, as one, soon echo with the support of millions. But, one is enough for a writer when a reader, by existential accident, stumbles upon their words-enthralled: mysterious to behold, that out of all possibilities, that for a short section of time, the writer lived in climaxed transcendental copulation with a reader.

Poetry forms a noble equilibrium between the conceptually paradoxical such as; ‘money talks’ on one end of a mythical scale to the perceptually obvious; ‘a dog with a tin can tied to its tail is no philosopher’ on the other end. It is for this reason, we are blessed by poets who took the time, they no longer have, but were glad to take when they were rich with a vocabulary, to make into rhyme, what they itched to scribble, those words they now have forgotten. Poetry helps our intellect and spirit form a polished, intricately coherent and supportive proof for the reasons of our existence in a terminally chaotic world and the biological inevitability of death. Poems are truth, the simple essence of life, and when written in the language of forgiveness and compassion gives gladness when we find ourselves in them: asking for and taking nothing. Poetry guides our search for our truth, as we share our stories and slip a little nearer to understanding the sorrows of common failure of human motives and as we fumble toward the language of empathy. Those choice tidbits of gossip, impetuous enthusiasms, scraps of prejudice, semantic twists of persuasion, favored theories; all the transient junk in our lives is flushed from our souls to give a glimpse of what life’s crisp and sparkling perfection could be."

My special thanks go to my friend who sent me the email. I appreciate his consent for posting these words here, and I respect his insightful mind and erudition. He is my teacher and my friend

My notes: This article used to stay at another blog site of mine which is meant for private stuff. I am releasing this in Michelle's scrapbook today, since quite a few of my friends like L. Cohen. Am I a private person? Haha... I don't mind sharing anyway. After I embedded the youtube video, it has become a bit noisy --- in a nice way, but it doesn't fit into " Fish in the water" anymore.