I'm Your Man: Book Review

On Cohen, what an amazing life Cohen led. The book reads like a novel, building to a climax ("It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor falls, the major lifts". Was this intentional? I am guessing it was.).

As I read, I would stop to watch interviews and performances by him on YouTube, as a way of supplementing what I was reading to learn more about him. I will seek out a couple of his poetry books.

On the writing: It is lengthy, at times too much detail, and other times passages left me confused, even after re-reading them. I almost dropped a star (on Goodreads), but as Cohen may have said, those are the cracks, that is how the light gets in. Everything has cracks.

For someone who could write sombre poems and songs (much of his humor and writing was of the dark variety), he had light in abundance. He never left his Jewish heritage, yet became an ordained Buddhist monk. Lived, off/on over the years, an artist’s life on an island off the coast of Greece (Hydra). Rotated his time between that island with NYC, LA, a farm in Tennessee and his hometown of Montreal. Lived simply, humbly. Not the artist to dash off a song in 15 minutes, but take years to write, then rewrite, whatever he was molding (over 80 verses to “Hallelujah” for example).

And always impeccably dressed!

All artists (poets, authors, singer/songwriters), as well as lovers of artists’ work, could benefit from reading this biography.