Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

M. Morgan Holmes teaches English at McGill University.

The release of this book coincides with a renewed popular and academic
interest in the enigmatic ruminations of Leonard Cohen, one of
Canada’s best-known writers of fiction, poetry, and songs. Cohen’s
nearly 40-year-long fascination with human desire, misery, and absurdity
is splendidly and generously represented in this timely volume. Weaving
together pieces from the poetry books, sound recordings, and uncollected
texts, as well as the novelesque Beautiful Losers and The Book of Mercy,
Stranger Music offers, for the novitiate, a full and judicious
introduction and, for the fan, a comprehensive volume that will awaken
fond memories.

Reading the lyrics to songs without their accompanying music is often a
dry, jarring affair. Returning to Cohen’s musical oeuvre on the
printed page, however, clarifies the brilliance of his poetical powers.
For instance, the lines “Suzanne takes you down / to her place near
the river / you can hear the boats go by / you can spend the night
beside her / And you know that she’s half crazy / but that’s why you
want to be there,” evoke as timeless a dream of irrational love as
Desdemona’s melancholy “Willow Song,” and one that merits as
lasting a place.

Similarly unconfined to a 1960s ethos, the selections from Beautiful
Losers still resonate with questions for which many people continue to
seek answers: “What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a
remote human possibility. ... He can love the shapes of human beings,
the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us
such men, such balancing monsters of love.” In a sense, Cohen himself
could be described as just such a “monster.” As the title of the
volume suggests, his music is often odd and not a little strange. Given
a different emphasis, however, the title signifies the music of a
stranger, of one who is alien to this world but who nevertheless
captures many of its essential qualities. To be reacquainted with
Cohen’s gift for distilling the precious and disturbing facets of
human existence enables one to recognize the stranger in oneself and
thus to have the opportunity to re-examine the world around with
invigorated eyes.