FLOWERS FOR HITLER First edition Title Flowers For Hitler Year published 1964 Publisher McClelland And Stewart Ltd., Toronto Pages 156 Notes Summary The first of Cohen's self-consciously "anti-art" gestures: an attempt, in his own words, to move "from the world of the golden-boy poet into the dung pile of the front-line writer."  Haunted by the image of the Nazi concentration camps, the book is 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 "beautiful losers" as Alexander Trocchi, Kerensky, and even Queen Victoria. Summary written for The Leonard Cohen Files by professor Stephen Scobie, copyright © 1997. Thanks to Albert Labbouz for help