Leonard Cohen Biography

Canadian poet, novelist, and composer-singer, born in Montreal, educated at McGill University under Louis Dudek, who published his first volume of verse, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956). Cohen achieved international fame in the 1960s and early 1970s with his bitter-sweet ironic songs and subsequently put his career as an entertainer before his writing. The evocative imagery and concern with contemporary mythologies in his songs and verse have led to his sometimes being viewed as a Canadian Bob Dylan. His volumes of verse include The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), Flowers for Hitler (1964), The Energy of Slaves (1972), Death of a Lady's Man (1978), Book of Mercy (1984), and Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (1993). His most important work as a writer is Beautiful Losers (1966), a fragmentary, early post-modernist novel which Margaret Atwood has seen as a quintessential expression of the Canadian victim mentality. Cohen's earlier novel, The Favourite Game (1963), based on his own experience, is a more conventional work about the son of wealthy Jewish parents who leaves for New York. His record albums include Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), Songs of Love and Hate (1971), Death of a Lady's Man (1977), Various Positions (1984), I'm Your Man (1988), and The Future (1992).