Okay, it’s not Leonard per se, but the print, Back in Montreal, Cohen generously donated to help fund the L.C. Poet in Residence program at Westmount High.
The poetry supporter and purchaser is none other than Lawrence Klein, poet and Vice President, Thought Technology Ltd. the world’s leading Biofeedback /Neurofeedback manufacturer. Holding the lithograph “Back In Montreal” is Public Poetry’s Jack Locke.
Tags: Biofeedback, Leonard Cohen Poet-In-Residence, Thought Technology
June 10, 2011 at 5:13 am |
“Irving Layton”, the lion roared,
“Is dogged by judicial hounds”.
With a gesture the eagle soared,
By phrase and verse he impounds
Their petty pernicious procession
In Solomon’s legal guise,
Plying their parasitic profession
Before his weary eyes.
Like Gulliver in Swift’s tale,
His victories were pyrrhic indeed,
He saw the thieves were put in jail
At the price of his Lawyers greed.
The “moral” of this story
To loosely use the word,
Is “justice is not blind”,
It’s functionally absurd.
Copyright Lawrence Klein 2000
What an unforgettable evening, Irving Layton regaled us with a saga of legal woes with three ex-wives!
After hearing my first poem Irving calling me: “An intellectual Ogden Nash”!
I then wrote him this poem, which is now in the “Layton Concordia University collection‘.
July 5, 2011 at 7:03 pm |
This was the first poem I wrote, that Irving Layton commented on.
WORDS
Are words our masters, or are they our slave?
A hopeless conundrum, but let me save
You from this riddle. For it is only speech,
Internal and externalized which requires the reach
For definitions of ideas, conceptions, and thought
Which are inherent to mankind, and need not be taught.
But words are not plastic, but rigid and fixed,
And it matters not how they are mixed,
they still must mean what the dictionary said,
and they structure the ideas that go on in your head.
So, until you slip their slippery noose
And really let your mind go loose,
to wander through emotion, sensation and space,
you’ll never understand, the meaning of grace.
Copyright Lawrence Klein 1972