An extraordinary speech from the grand old man, during which he says

"I've always felt some ambiguity about an award for poetry. Poetry comes from a place that no one commands and no one conquers."

For the rest, for a remarkable and poignant story and for some idea of where Cohen's music came from -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIR5ps8usuo

Then of course, there's the Laureateship or as I like to call it the Lickspittleshit given for scraping the knee to inherited privilige and money...

Cohen has a way:
music
and the words
that
each other
play

So glad I came across this. I could listen to him reading a shopping list. Fascinating. Thanks for posting Dave.

I like when he said, "I don't want to work for my pay, but I want to be paid for my work".... And his intimation that if you want to do it you have to do it for it's own sake... "It seems you go for nothing if you really want to go that far"