Book of Longing

Book of Longing is the first new poetry book by Leonard Cohen since 1984's Book of Mercy. First published in 2006 by McClelland and Stewart, Book of Longing contains 167 previously unpublished poems and drawings, mostly written at a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy in California, where Cohen lived from 1994 to 1999, and in India, which he visited regularly during the late 1990s. The book also incorporates a number of poems written after his 1978 book, Death of a Lady's Man (not to be confused with his 1977 album, Death of a Ladies' Man). These presumably were left out of his 1984 Book of Mercy, which contained only psalm-like meditations. Book of Longing also collects some of the lyrics to songs from the albums Ten New Songs (2001) and Dear...