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amiboughter's review against another edition
5.0
Let’s drink to when it’s over / And let’s drink to when we meet
I’ll be standing on this corner / Where there used to be a street
I’ll be standing on this corner / Where there used to be a street
piltdownworship's review against another edition
3.0
There's a slight urge to give this a fourth star out of sentimentality, but it's best to refrain. Though there is a fair amount of material from his final decade following 'Book of Longing' (2006), one wonders if his last great poetic works were in fact collected there, and what's left was to serve as the bulk of this final assemblage which seems to reflect the most simplistic decades in his discography (post-The Future, 1992 and pre-Old Ideas, 2012). There is little to engage with on any deep level, much as Ten New Songs and (especially) Dear Heather, both from the era in question, are the most adult-contemporary and flat-out basic "mom-music" albums of his career.
What 'The Flame' does highlight, however, is how strong the songwriting is on Old Ideas - his best album in over 20 years - and how the album that followed, Popular Problems, wasn't only plagued by the gratingly repetitive nature of the backing singers doing a call and response to what feels like every line in every song, nor was it the overall song structure / production in general that made it one of his weakest albums, but it's the lyrics themselves that indeed leave a lot to be desired. There's almost nothing there when you look at the words on paper, shadowed and sandwiched between the incredible words on Old Ideas and the worthy final effort, You Want It Darker, which elevate those albums (especially the former) to where they deserve to be (along side some of his greatest works).
I will never deny the potency of his lyrics - sometimes it's hard to listen to Songs from a Room, and Songs of Love and Hate is devastating in its own right, not to mention so much of what came after - and the themes present throughout his works remained right until the end, but sometimes people just get to growing old and begin looking for simpler pleasures and simpler despairs, and relating those pleasures and despairs in simpler ways that may best be appreciated by those of a similar age, while those of us still very far behind are still searching for that which is most evocative.
The penultimate section, 'Selections from the Notebooks', boasts some great unfinished poems that upon first reading felt more potent than the majority of what Cohen had actually completed and selected for inclusion in this volume. Closing out the book is the incredible tale of what became the foundation of his life's work in song.
It's nice to have a final word, both in book and in song, and it's pleasing to know that he was able to (mostly) complete everything himself before the end. Living in Montreal he's still always within some sort of reach, and there will undoubtedly be many more trips past his old front porch and visits to his grave site.
What 'The Flame' does highlight, however, is how strong the songwriting is on Old Ideas - his best album in over 20 years - and how the album that followed, Popular Problems, wasn't only plagued by the gratingly repetitive nature of the backing singers doing a call and response to what feels like every line in every song, nor was it the overall song structure / production in general that made it one of his weakest albums, but it's the lyrics themselves that indeed leave a lot to be desired. There's almost nothing there when you look at the words on paper, shadowed and sandwiched between the incredible words on Old Ideas and the worthy final effort, You Want It Darker, which elevate those albums (especially the former) to where they deserve to be (along side some of his greatest works).
I will never deny the potency of his lyrics - sometimes it's hard to listen to Songs from a Room, and Songs of Love and Hate is devastating in its own right, not to mention so much of what came after - and the themes present throughout his works remained right until the end, but sometimes people just get to growing old and begin looking for simpler pleasures and simpler despairs, and relating those pleasures and despairs in simpler ways that may best be appreciated by those of a similar age, while those of us still very far behind are still searching for that which is most evocative.
The penultimate section, 'Selections from the Notebooks', boasts some great unfinished poems that upon first reading felt more potent than the majority of what Cohen had actually completed and selected for inclusion in this volume. Closing out the book is the incredible tale of what became the foundation of his life's work in song.
It's nice to have a final word, both in book and in song, and it's pleasing to know that he was able to (mostly) complete everything himself before the end. Living in Montreal he's still always within some sort of reach, and there will undoubtedly be many more trips past his old front porch and visits to his grave site.
mossgarden's review
3.5
A nice collection of Leonard Cohen's work. I haven't read much poetry in my life so I don't have much to compare it to but there were certainly poems in this book that stuck with me as much as his songs do.
ofirbun's review against another edition
medium-paced
4.0
The first 3rd of the book, the Poems, was fantastic, some of his best work there. The Lyrics and the art were fun, but the last part of the book, the notes, kinda lost me. Still a great read for the first half or so
cwalsh's review against another edition
5.0
Biased? Maybe, but this collection is a beautiful compilation that shows Cohen’s many talents in a different light.