Of fucking and altar boys..........

I don't think I've ever read a more scathing article in my life than I did just now. I'm starting to work on the research for my Cohen paper and this article by Fred Wah just blew me out of the water. His description of Cohen is as follows:

"...News of fucking. Altars. Fucking. Solitude. Fucking. Order. Discipline. The mathematics of angels. Fucking. Body Beautiful. The U.S.A. Fucking. All, and more breakfast vectors on the radio reporting to us the news of the Poet's life configured, to be sure, by his Montreal-Jewish world view and his own little desire for a republic of anthems and miracles, the blinding glint of the compact disk of western civilization."

(Wah, Fred. “Cohen’s Noos.” Canadian Poetry 33 (1993): 100-107)

He cites Stephen Scobie [who is a BIG critic of Cohen's work]:

Leonard what is this shit

a perpetual diary

locked with a golden clasp

oh yes, and a silver pin

which has been mislaid

(abandon the pun)

out there on St. Catherine's highway

...

I don't even know where to begin making sense of this quasi-stream-of-consciousness periodical "article." It would suck to lay your soul out on a platter and let people see, only to have people spit at it, or flick it away with one dismissive piece of criticism. I wonder whether Wah has ever heard of the term 'constructive criticism.' I am glad I'm not a writer. I suppose that Cohen is getting a reaction, and reactions, even negative ones, are worth something.

...

What I really don't understand is that this Wah guy admits to owning, and having read, and underlined, and left sticky notes on, several different volumes of Cohen's work. WTF??