Books like Let Us Compare Mythologies

Let Us Compare Mythologies is definitely the work of a young man. Published when he was only 22 – that’s twelve years before the release of his first LP of moody and emotionally battering tunes, Songs of Leonard Cohen - Cohen tries to inhabit the voice of the weary prophet who has abandoned the world so that he may better brood over all his losses in love. Every one of these poems comes armed with biblical imagery (plucked from Judaism and Christianity), references to Homer, quaint notions of Eastern mysticism, and enough allusions of antiquity to fill a Grecian urn. The result is pleasant enough, but one too many of these poems relies on trips to the river with women of the “they will only leave you” variety, as well as mentions of grass and shards from the True Cross. Cohen is also writing fully in the “poems are meant to be abstract and ungrammatical” school of thought, which is a style that makes my poor narrative-oriented brain go, Ouch! But Cohen does prove himself to be competently literate about his posey, and even though the wizened-old-man shtick wears thin, a handful of these poems have that magic you’ll find in his songs, those sobering moments of lucidity that make you want to tell the bartender to go ahead and pour you another stiff one.