The Official Leonard Cohen Site

20.Juni.2012

A Leonard Cohen Minute: What Allan Ginsburg Asked Leonard Cohen about Buddhism

A Leonard Cohen Minute: What Allan Ginsburg Asked Leonard Cohen about Buddhism

Kurzweil: Where does Judaism fit in?

Cohen: Well, I became a student of a Zen monk. I remember Allen Ginsburg saying to me at a certain point, ”How do you reconcile this with Judaism?” I said that I find no conflict myself. As you know, there are Jewish practitioners in the Zen movement. I…
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20.Juni.2012

A Leonard Cohen Minute: Poets Who Influenced Leonard Cohen

A Leonard Cohen Minute: Poets Who Influenced Leonard Cohen

“I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words. I would haunt all the secondhand book shops in Montreal with this huge appetite for poetry. My two great heroes are WB Yeats and Fernando Garcia Lorca.” He quotes from Lorca’s Song Of The Morning Market: “ Under…
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20.Juni.2012

WHEN I UNCOVERED YOUR BODY

When I uncovered your body
I thought shadows fell deceptively,
urging memories of perfect rhyme.
I thought I could bestow beauty
like a benediction and that your half-dark flesh
would answer to the prayer.
I thought I understood your face
because I had seen it painted twice
or a hundred times, or kissed it
when it was carved in stone. With only a breath, a vague turning,
you uncovered shadows
more deftly than I had flesh,
and the real and violent proportions of your body
made obsolete old treaties of excellence,
measures and poems,
and clamoured with a single challenge of personal beauty,
which cannot be interpreted or praised:
it must be met.

– The poem “When I Uncovered Your Body” from Fifteen Poems by Leonard Cohen published in ”VALENTINE’S DAY POEM: Canadian Poet, Songwriter, Artist Leonard Cohen: ‘When I Uncovered Your Body’,” Huntington News, February 14, 2012. (via leonardcohenminute)
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