Yesterday I posted the
New York Times obituary on my Facebook writer page:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/obituaries/leonard-cohen-dies.html?_r=0
Tonight I am listening to a recording on YouTube of the 1968 BBC Broadcasts as I write these lines. In her autobiography, Judy Collins writes about how Cohen was so shy about performing that she had to lead him out on to the stage and stay with him as he performed "Suzanne".
Cohen was one of several deep-thinking singer-songwriters from the 1960s. To my thinking only Dylan approached Cohen for being well-read and a mystic. He took seriously the priestly nature of his last name, and was an observant Jew all his life; but he was interested in other religions as well.
An early ad in the
Rolling Stone compared Cohen to James Joyce. My elder brother explained that to me. Actually another Irish writer, William Butler Yeats, was more of an early influence on Cohen. That I actually see more clearly, but it really does not matter. The two writers are not mutually-exclusive, and even if they were, it was up to Cohen to work it out for himself.
Now I want to read some of Cohen's poetry and prose works. But like Proteus in mythology Cohen performed in other genres and broadened his appeal. That is very impressive, since he excelled in all of them. He performed art songs; at least that's how I think of them,
It will not be too long until some collections of his work are complied, and we can step back and marvel again at all that he offered the world. Perhaps the greatest compliment was the number of singers who covered his songs.
