Farrar, Straus and Giroux to Publish Final Volume of Poems by Leonard Cohen

Farrar, Straus and Giroux announces the publication of Leonard Cohen’s final book, THE FLAME, which was completed in the months before his death in November 2016. The deal was arranged with Andrew Wylie at the Wylie Agency. The book will be published in October 2018. In Canada, the book will be published by McClelland & Stewart; in the United Kingdom, it will be published by Canongate Books.

Robert Kory, Leonard Cohen’s manager and trustee of the Leonard Cohen Estate, said, “During the final months of his life, Leonard had a singular focus—completing this book taken largely from his unpublished poems and selections from his notebooks. The flame and how our culture threatened its extinction was a central concern. Though in declining health, Leonard died unexpectedly. Those of us who had the rare privilege of spending time with him during this period recognized that the flame burned bright within him to the very end. This book, finished only days before his death, reveals to all the intensity of his inner fire.”

THE FLAME includes a stunning collection of Cohen’s last poems, selected and ordered by the author in the final months of his life. Additionally, the book contains an extensive selection from Cohen’s notebooks, which he kept in poetic form throughout his life, offering an unprecedentedly intimate look inside the life and mind of a unique artist and thinker. THE FLAME will also offer the full lyrics to Cohen’s final three albums, as well as those written by Cohen for the album BLUE ALERT by his collaborator Anjani. The book, which will also feature prose pieces and illustrations by Cohen, is an enormously powerful final chapter in Cohen’s storied literary career.

“It is an honor to publish the book that Leonard Cohen reckoned with in his last days. No one speaks to our broken world quite like Leonard Cohen,” said Ileene Smith, Vice President and Executive Editor of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, who acquired THE FLAME.