![]() "A slight chill in the air/ seemed to polish the sunlight/ and confer the status of beauty/ to every object I beheld … I am so grateful/ to my new anti-depressant," he writes in the poem Grateful. Much of Cohen's writing here feels timeless and elevated, so there is a surprising jolt of recognition when, on occasion, the pieces contain a more specific contemporary image or reference. The tone is sometimes wistful, sometimes wry, but Cohen is always observant and amused, even when he is the butt of his own jokes. The themes are similar to those that thread and recur throughout Cohen's oeuvre: longing, love, prayer, desire, brokenness, spirituality and death. While his 2006 poetry collection Book of Longing was often concerned with the details of his day-to-day life, much of it written while Cohen was living at a Zen centre atop Mount Baldy in California, The Flame was conceived and compiled down the mountain, and it is more reflective than Cohen's earlier work. ![]() It also includes a selection of Cohen's self-portraits, some brief playful emails written shortly before he died, and a speech he gave in 2011 while accepting the Prince of Asturias Award in Spain. ![]() Edited by professors Robert Faggen and Alexandra Pleshoyano, The Flame is organised, as instructed by the author, into three sections: poetry, lyrics and notebook entries. ![]()
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