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THE FLAME

Name: THE FLAME
Author: Leonard Cohen
ISBN: 978-0-374-15606-0

POEMS NOTEBOOKS LYRICS DRAWINGS

by Leonard Cohen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 2, 2018

Cohen’s fans will be delighted, and students of poetic and lyrical composition have much to learn here as well.

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A gathering of late work by the poet, singer, and chronicler of life’s more difficult moments.

Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) wrote hundreds of songs, all of which began as poems, as well as the novel Beautiful Losers (1966). If his fame dropped nearly to the point of disappearance in the 1980s, it was no accident: He withdrew from the world to become a Zen monk, and he remained so even during the years when, bilked by a manager, he returned to the stage to sing his way back to solvency. This gathering of poems, lyrics from his last four albums, sketches, and notebook jottings is emphatically for the Cohen completist, who will be fascinated by the process of how those random notes morphed into poems and then into such memorable songs as “You Want It Darker”: “A million candles burning / For the love that never came / You want it darker / We kill the flame.” In some instances, Cohen reiterates a Jewish piety that never quite left him; in others, as his editors note, he works themes and symbols that remained present in his work throughout his career, notably the fire that gives this volume its name. The volume, peppered with sketches and notes in the author’s distinctive hand, closes with a speech given on the occasion of receiving a prize from the Spanish government, in which he connects his work to that nation by means of his early devotion to flamenco guitar and in which he protests that the award may be misplaced to some extent, since “poetry comes from a place that no one commands and no one conquers….In other words, if I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often." That he managed to find that place so often, though, is abundantly clear in these pages.

Cohen’s fans will be delighted, and students of poetic and lyrical composition have much to learn here as well.

Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-374-15606-0

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2018

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MADELINE'S SEASONS
developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno

- BOOK REVIEW
LOVE FROM MADELINE
by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno

- BOOK REVIEW
LA BONNE TABLE
by Ludwig Bemelmans

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)