Tea and oranges and Leonard Cohen’s poetic lie

If writer and musician Leonard Cohen were still alive, he would turn 90 on 21 September. We pay homage to one of his famous songs about tea – and the muse who’s still alive.

Leonard Cohen, Sydney 2013

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever
And you know that she’s half-crazy but that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her that you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer that you’ve always been her lover

—‘Suzanne’ by Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen was a Canadian poet trying to make it in the US as a country songwriter when he wrote about dancer Suzanne Verdal, partner of his sculptor friend Armand Vaillancourt. It was the 1960s and the Beat generation was in full bohemian swing. Verdal, then 17, was creative, free-spirited and full of vitality – a captivating mix that inspired Cohen to write the poem that later became the song ‘Suzanne’.

Initially recorded by Judy Collins in 1966, the song had another life as Cohen’s single in 1967, which led to his breakthrough album, Songs of Leonard Cohen. The man who had borne a range of titles from poet to comedian, philosopher to writer, had now cemented himself as a folk musician.

Decades later, Verdal confirmed that the lyrical portrait is of her and not Cohen’s then partner Suzanne Elrod. She had a place on the St Lawrence River in Montreal and when Cohen came to visit, she would “light a candle and serve tea,” she explained in a BBC interview. “And it would be quiet for several minutes, then we would speak. And I would speak about life and poetry and we’d share ideas.”

The oranges of the song were mandarins, she said, so she really did feed him tea and oranges.

Cohen, who died in 2016, mentioned that the tea served was US brand Bigelow Tea’s flagship blend, Constant Comment. The ingredients for Constant Comment are listed as black tea, orange rind and sweet spices, though the recipe is still a closely guarded secret for the family-run brand, now onto its third generation. The problem is Bigelow sources neither its tea nor oranges ‘all the way from China’ – its black tea is from Sri Lanka and the oranges are from a place “not even close” to China, says current CEO Cindi Bigelow, who won’t disclose where for commercial reasons. Yet Cohen’s poetic lie persists as a touch of exoticism at a time when China was largely closed to the world.

Today you can certainly get tea and oranges that come all the way from China in one tea product. Popular in recent years has been chen pi pu’er, a dried mandarin stuffed with fermented tea, a favourite of Chinese medicine practitioners as a digestive aid, throat soother and source of vitamin C. If you can’t source a cup of Constant Comment, have one of these instead to honour the great folk musician Leonard Cohen and his still-living muse, the effervescent Suzanne Verdal.

Read: ‘Suzanne Takes You Down to Her Place Near the River’ by Lacy Warner

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This article originally appeared in AUSTCS enews 17 September 2024.