PRAISE FOR LEONARD COHEN: As strong a poet as he is a musician * * Guardian * * Exceptional. Clear yet steamy, cosmic yet private, both playful and profound. . . as soulful a credo as he has ever put on paper * * New York Times * * Utterly unique and impossible to imitate no matter how hard we tried -- NICK CAVE Awe-inspiring . . . Cohen emerges as the wry, sensual mystic his champions have always known he was * * Sunday Telegraph * * He is a writer of terrific energy and colour, a Rabelaisian comic and a visualiser * * Observer * * Leonard Cohen was the poet laureate of the lack, the psalmist of the privation, who made imperfection gorgeous * * New York Times * * There is something irresistible about Cohen's charm * * New Yorker * * The best bring an ironic, world-weary sensibility to bear on themes of ageing, sex, sensuality and spirituality * * Financial Times * * Playful, colourful, erotic . . . brilliant and sharp as flint * * The Big Issue * *

THESE POEMS AND NOTEBOOKS ARE THE LAST WORD FROM THE LATE, GREAT LEONARD COHEN The Flame is a stunning collection of Leonard Cohen's last poems and writings, selected and ordered by Cohen in the final months of his life. The book contains an extensive selection from Cohen's notebooks, featuring lyrics, prose pieces and illustrations, which he kept in poetic form throughout his life, and offers an unprecedentedly intimate look inside the life and mind of a singular artist and thinker. An enormously powerful final chapter in Cohen's storied literary career, The Flame showcases the full range of Leonard Cohen's lyricism, from the exquisitely transcendent to the darkly funny. By turns devastatingly sad and winningly strange, these are the works of a poet and lyricist who has plumbed the depths of our darkest questions and come up wanting, yearning for more.