Flowers for Hitler

Flowers for Hitler Synopsis

In Flowers for Hitler, Leonard Cohen's third collection of poetry, Cohen first experiments with his self-consciously "e;anti-art"e; gestures: an attempt, in his own words, to move "e;from the world of the golden-boy poet into the dung pile of the front-line writer."e; Haunted by the image of the Nazi concentration camps, the poems within are deliberately ugly, tasteless, and confrontational, setting out to destroy the image of Cohen as a sweet romantic poet. Instead, it celebrates the failed careers and destroyed minds of such "e;beautiful losers"e; as Alexander Trocchi, Kerensky, and even Queen Victoria. Cohen, in Flowers for Hitler, is an author auditioning himself for all the parts in an unwritten play, underlining the process of self-recovery and self-discovery that is at the center of these poems.

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