Essay collection on Leonard Cohen's work organized by the concept of "the contemporary," which helps to explain Cohen's staying power and existential depth. The chapters offer related but diverse perspectives-historical, artistic, spiritual-on his songs, poems, novels, and drawings, and examine how Cohen's different types of art fit together. The Contemporary Leonard Cohen is an exciting new study that offers an original explanation of Leonard Cohen's staying power and his various positions in music, literature, and art. The death of Leonard Cohen received media attention across the globe, and this international star remains dear to the hearts of many fans. This book examines the diversity of Cohen's art in the wake of his death, positioning him as a contemporary, multi-media artist whose career was framed by the twentieth-century and neoliberal contexts of its production. The authors borrow the idea of "the contemporary" especially from philosophy and art history, applying it to Cohen for the first time-not only to the drawings that he included in some of his books but also to his songs, poems, and novels. This idea helps us to understand Cohen's techniques after his postmodern experiments with poems and novels in the 1960s and 1970s. It also helps us to see how his most recent songs, poems, and drawings developed out of that earlier material, including earlier connections to other writers and musicians. Philosophically, "the contemporary" also sounds out the deep feelings that Cohen's work still generates in readers and listeners. Whether these feelings are spiritual or secular, sincere or ironic, we get them partly from the sense of timeliness and the sense of timelessness in Cohen's lyrics and images, which speak to our own lives and times, our own struggles and survival. From a set of international collaborators, The Contemporary Leonard Cohen delivers an appreciative but critical examination of one of our dark luminaries. - There is a discussion of the #metoo movement and how Cohen's famous persona as a Ladies' Man may be interpreted through that lens. - A chapter draws parallels between Cohen's study of authoritarianism in his much-neglected antagonistic poetry of the mid-1960s and Trumpism. - The introduction and conclusion include analysis of tributes to Cohen since his death, including recent films and novels, and The Globe and Mail's Canada Day "Anthem" produced during the Covid-19 pandemic. - Although Cohen's popularity encourages his celebration, our book examines both Cohen and this celebration more critically. For example, chapters examine the ethics of his representations and the affect of guilt that is often present in his early writing. Chapters also position him within the history of colonialism and practices of misogyny and cultural appropriation. While the book as a whole makes a case for Cohen's on-going relevance, it is critical of the current celebratory framework through which that relevance manifests. - This is the first academic book to bring scholars together to assess Cohen's career and legacy after his death. Cross-disciplinary, looking at his work as poet, novelist, musician, and visual artist. Introduction: The Contemporary Leonard Cohen - Kait Pinder and Joel Deshaye "A Man Must Be Very Alone": The Contemporary as the Outsider "I Desire Only Your Love by the Telling": Alienation and Authenticity in "A Ballet of Lepers" and The Favourite Game - Laura Cameron and Claudine Gélinas-Faucher Leonard Cohen, Marianne Ihlen and Hydra's Summer of Love - Tanya Dalziell and Paul Genoni Untimely Meditations: Critical History in Flowers for Hitler - Kait Pinder Is It Really Revolting? Toward an Ethics of Loss in Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers and Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here - Gregory Betts After "THE DACHAU GENERATI

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