Boudoir Poet

One might argue that Cohen expressed the world through sex – or vice versa. Some of his most memorable songs (“Marianne,” for example) use individual paramours as prisms that refract larger experience. His lyrics, while not explicit in the sense that some rock or rap songs are, often evoke the power and pleasure of sex. Both of his novels are more about sex than anything else, and his drawings feature female nudes. Cohen has asserted that he finds no tension between sex and spirituality, and songs like “Hallelujah” insist upon their deep imbrication with each other. He has been called, and called himself, a “ladies’ man,” but he also dismisses the assertion that he has been especially successful with women. In the era of #MeToo, one might think that Cohen would have come in for more condemnation, but his genuine interest in women and a lack of guilt about sex perhaps combined to forestall this. This chapter explores the uses and the meaning of sex and sexuality in Cohen’s work.