Thursday, February 01, 2007

He's Your Man

A word to the Nobel Committee:

How about Leonard Cohen for the Literature Prize? While not a poetry critic, I find myself touched by his lyrics (and poems), and I know tens of millions of others (or more) have had similar experiences. I don't know exactly what criteria the Nobel committe apply, but I think Cohen has certainly produced a body of work over the course of his lifetime, which counts for a lot I should think. Plus a lot of it is brilliant. The committee has honored novelists and poets and playwrights and politicians -- why not a songwriter (who also happens to have published many volumes of poetry)? He basically reinvented poetic performance, by cloaking it in song.

Give the man the medal.

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