COHEN, Leonard.

£30,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Seven original typescript poems. Five unpublished poems and two early variant forms of poems later rewritten and published in The Spice-Box of Earth (1961) with significant differences. Original material of this calibre is rare in commerce; much of Cohen's archive is held at the University of Toronto, with further manuscripts and correspondence at McMaster University. The poem "As I lay dead, In my love-soaked bed" has the annotation "NY" at the head and a small correction in Cohen's hand, and the poem "I told my love a story" is inscribed at the head, "For Jud", and signed by Cohen. All of these poems derive from the collection of the experimental filmmaker Jud Yalkut (1938-2013), a friend and fellow student of Cohen's at McGill University. Cohen attended McGill from 1951 to 1955.The poems, untitled aside from "Song", comprise:"I told my love a story", eight stanzas of four lines each, inscribed to Jud."Song", three stanzas of three lines each, with Cohen's typed address while studying at Colombia University (1956-7), "Leonard Cohen, 500 Riverside Drive, New York City"."When I was an artist", six stanzas of four lines each."The scholar-poets, clever and dead", three stanzas, four or five lines each."The king's goldsmith once learned to work in flesh", one stanza, eighteen lines. Later rewritten and published as "The Girl Toy" in The Spice-Box of Earth, with several word changes and a different formatting."O my darling", six stanzas, four lines each."As I lay dead", two stanz

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