Popular Problems, poem by Greg Santos (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

POPULAR PROBLEMS
by Greg Santos

What the hell am I doing?
Sometimes overproduce
Something’s obscure
On the wrong side of accessible

Savage about our vision
You can pretty well tell
It nourishes me
It’s the done-ness of it that I really like

There’s always a group I’m working at
There’s a few I’d like to finish before I die
Always like a bear in a honey tree
In some corner of the heart

It’s a lovely melody
That I can’t find any words for

SOURCE: “Leonard Cohen on Longevity, Money, Poetry and Sandwiches” by Gavin Edwards, Rolling Stone (September 19, 2014).

IMAGE: Leonard Cohen by Graham Denholm, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was created using snippets from an interview with Leonard Cohen from Rolling Stone, prior to the launch of his new album Popular Problems and his 80^th birthday. I’d like to think of this poem as an homage to the mastery of Cohen and the mystery of poetry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Greg Santos is the author of Rabbit Punch! (DC Books, 2014) and The Emperor’s Sofa (DC Books, 2010). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. He is a graphic designer, teaches creative writing to at-risk youth, and is the poetry editor for carte blanche. He lives in Montréal with his wife and two children. Follow him on Twitter at @moondoggyspad.

Reluctance Is the Word, poem by Sonja Johanson (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

RELUCTANCE IS THE WORD
by Sonja Johanson

I can’t be seen weeping.
We’re talking in a world where
people are dodging bullets,
having their nails pulled out –
one is never really certain.
All I’ve got is a manual for
living with defeat, song
that operates on so many levels,
trying to beat the devil, trying
to get on top of it. We rehearsed
longer than is reasonable; we’re
coming to the end of the book –
but not quite yet.

SOURCE: Dorian Lynsky’s interview with Leonard Cohen in The Guardian (January 19, 2012).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I couldn’t think who I would choose for a celebrity, and then ran across this interview with “The Poet of Rock Music,” Leonard Cohen. Who wouldn’t be in love with L.C.? I actually knew him as a poet long before I was ever exposed to his music — “Suzanne ” [Takes You Down] was used as an example of free verse in a Norton’s Poetry Anthology (which I was reading, for fun, at age twelve). I hated it. It didn’t rhyme, I couldn’t scan it, the meaning was vague — what a piece of tripe! And I read it over, and over, and over. I have grown ever more fond of Mr. Cohen as the years have passed, and he has only become more wonderful in his current “comeback” phase. It was such a pleasure to find his essence and his voice through his interview question.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sonja Johanson attended College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Maine. She has recent work appearing in The Albatross, Off the Coast, and Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed, and was a participating writer in Found Poetry Review‘s 2014 Oulipost Project. Sonja divides her time between work in Massachusetts and her home in the mountains of western Maine.

The Top of Mr. Cohen’s Head, poem by Donna Hilbert (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

The Top of Mr. Cohen’s Head
by Donna Hilbert

I wear the hat,
get dressed everyday.

The devil laughs if you say
there’s no temptation.

Never thought myself
a singer.
On those matters, don’t linger.

I’m sent like a postcard
place to place.

The universe is a doorway,
hard to enter.

Songs move,
there is a place to live in rhythm.

I love the moment when I close
the hotel room door.

I have worked for 1,000 years,
been wearing a fedora

for a long, long time.

SOURCE: “Hallelujah! Leonard Cohen Meets Uncut,” interview with Leonard Cohen by Brian D. Johnson, Uncut (December 2008, Take 139).

PHOTO: Leonard Cohen by Lorca Cohen, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I consider Leonard Cohen the premier songwriter/poet/mythmaker of my lifetime. He finds the mystery in the mud of human life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Donna Hilbert’s latest book is The Congress of Luminous Bodies, from Aortic Books. The Green Season, World Parade Books, a collection of poems, stories and essays, is now available in an expanded second edition. Hilbert appears in and her poetry is the text of the documentary Grief Becomes Me: A Love Story, a Christine Fugate film. Earlier books include Mansions and Deep Red, from Event Horizon, Transforming Matter and Traveler in Paradise from PEARL Editions and the short story collection Women Who Make Money and the Men Who Love Them from Staple First Editions and published in England. Poems in Italian can be found in Bloc notes 59 and in French in La page blanche, in both cases, translated by Mariacristina Natalia Bertoli. New work is in recent or forthcoming issues of 5AM, Nerve Cowboy, PEARL, RC Muse, Serving House Journal, Poets & Artists and California Quarterly. She is a frequent contributor to the online journal Your Daily Poem. Her work is widely anthologized, most recently in The Widows’ Handbook, Kent State University Press. Learn more at donnahilbert.com.

Chelsea Hotel #2, lyrics by Leonard Cohen

“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.”

From Chelsea Hotel #2, song by LEONARD COHEN

Over the years, Leonard Cohen has expressed regret about naming Janis Joplin as the inspiration for “Chelsea Hotel #2,” a song from his 1974 album New Skin for the Old Ceremony. (Read the lyrics here.) Others believe Janis — who died in 1970 — wouldn’t have minded, since she spoke openly of her encounters with Jim Morrison and Leonard Cohen. Apparently she met Cohen in the elevator at the Chelsea Hotel while  looking for Kris Kristofferson. When Cohen learned of her mission, he told her: “I’m Kris Kristofferson,” though he was sure she knew that the author of “Me and Bobby McGee” was a lot taller.

Chelsea Hotel #2 by Leonard Cohen

“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel

you were famous, your heart was a legend.

You told me again you preferred handsome men

but for me you would make an exception.”

From Chelsea Hotel #2, song by LEONARD COHEN

THOUGHTS: Over the years, Leonard Cohen has expressed regret about naming Janis Joplin as the inspiration for “Chelsea Hotel #2,” a song from his 1974 album New Skin for the Old Ceremony. (Read the lyrics here.) Others believe Janis — who died in 1970 — wouldn’t have minded, since she spoke openly of her encounters with Jim Morrison and Leonard Cohen. Apparently she met Cohen in the elevator at the Chelsea Hotel while  looking for Kris Kristofferson. When Cohen learned of her mission, he told her: “I’m Kris Kristofferson,” though he was sure she knew that the author of “Me and Bobby McGee” was a lot taller.