Leonard Cohen Selected Poems 1956-1968 is a 245-page softcover published in 1968 by The Viking Press, Inc., and this is the stated fourth printing. There is a tiny closed tear on the cover and a crease along the spine and corner. Inside the front cover is the name of the previous owner written in ink. The rest of the pages are clean and unmarked but the binding may be dry due to age.
In his eloquent search for what he calls a "state of grace"--the kind of balance with which one rises to the chaos around him--Leonard Cohen eludes the restrictions of genres and generations. Selected Poems includes many of the ecstatically lyric poems first published in The Spice-Box of Earth, and over one hundred poems, many with strong social and religious overtones, from three volumes previously published only in Canada. Collected for the first time are twenty-three newly written songs and verses that have the stark power of fairy tales. With his flowing lines and sensory images, he is equally adept at free-verse story-telling and more traditional forms. His wry humor adds poignancy to simple agony, as in the graffiti-like lines, "Marita/please find me/I am almost thirty." Eclectic, searching, the voice of Leonard Cohen is above all deeply personal.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-22317
