Books: Black Romanticism

SELECTED POEMS 1956-1968 by Leonard Cohen. 245 pages. Viking. $5 hardback, $1.95 paperback.

Montreal's Leonard Cohen appears to be drifting toward the vortex of popular success. His 1966 novel, Beautiful Losers, a hallucinogenic potion of Iroquois history and art-as-psychosis, has a sizable readership among college students and literate dropouts. Cohen has been documented on an educational television film and interviewed on CBS. His recent move into folk-rock composing and singing has not gone unnoticed either. His song Suzanne, a sweetly eerie and rather self-conscious effort to be both sublimely sacred and sublimely...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!