Book of Longing
SynopsisPlot
Leonard Cohen wrote the poems in Book of Longing—his first book of poetry in more than twenty years after 1984's Book of Mercy—during his five-year stay at a Zen monastery on Southern California's Mount Baldy, and in Los Angeles, Montreal, and Mumbai. This dazzling collection is enhanced by the author's playful and provocative drawings, which interact in exciting, unexpected ways on the page with poetry that is timeless, meditative, and often darkly humorous.
Story
About this book
Leonard Cohen published Book of Longing in 2006, his first collection of new poetry since Book of Mercy appeared in 1984. The poems were written across a span of roughly two decades, during which Cohen spent five years living at a Zen Buddhist monastery on Mount Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California. Other poems came from periods in Los Angeles, Montreal, and Mumbai. The collection reflects these scattered locations and the long stretch of time over which it took shape.
Alongside the poems, Cohen included his own ink drawings, many of them self-portraits rendered in a loose, comic style. The drawings sit on the page beside or around the text, forming a kind of visual conversation with the poetry rather than serving as simple illustration. Cohen's writing here moves between meditation, desire, aging, and humor, often within the same poem. The tone can shift from quiet observation to blunt self-mockery in a few lines.
Mount Baldy, where Cohen lived as an ordained monk under Zen teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi, sits at roughly 3,000 meters elevation east of Los Angeles. The monastery's isolation and discipline shaped much of the book's contemplative character, though Cohen balances that stillness with wit and restlessness drawn from city life.
