Words, when strung together like a beautiful rare necklace, are priceless, indestructible and eternal. Poetry is the grand ballroom these words live, breathe and dance in. Poetry waltzes into the heart and creates rhapsodies and symphonies for the soul. Her playground of emotions is peppered with excitement, enchantment, love, harmony, sorrow, heartache, empathy and bereavement. Poetry is the rhythm of the universe painted onto paper with pen, ink and imagination.
The world has been very blessed with a myriad of great writers and poets that have poured their knowledge, imagination and emotions into written words. Rod McKuen is one of these internationally acclaimed great poets who connects with the masses and the classes through his familiar yet unfamiliar poetry.
He was born in 1933 in Oakland California as the “great depression” was gasping its last breaths, leaving home at the young age of eleven to escape from the abuse he suffered at the hands of a sadistic stepfather. He worked throughout the western United States jobs as a cowhand, lumberjack, ditch digger, railroad worker, and rodeo cowboy.
His first public performance as a poet was in the early fifties when he read at San Francisco’s Jazz Cellar with Kerouac and Ginsburg. Early and mid way through his career Rod McKuen suffered from long bouts of Clinical Depression that lasted well into the eighties. He openly states: “This is a much misunderstood and too seldom diagnosed condition.” “I finally conquered it by finally realizing I had absolutely nothing to be depressed about at all.”
He was a lyricist and poet of extraordinary magnitude and depth in the seventies and eighties and remains a bestseller still today, He painted love’s drippings in vibrant colors, poured from the canvas of his mind onto published parchments for all the world to revel in. He is a giant of literary magnitude with three dozen books of poetry published and translated into eleven languages, selling over 65 million copies. He composed more than 1500 songs and has received 63 gold records. Songs he has written and composed have sold over 100 million records. Madonna, Frank Sinatra, Waylon Jennings, Perry Como, Dusty Springfield and Johnny Mathis are a but a mere handful of the world renowned artists that have recorded his songs. Frank Sinatra actually commissioned Rod McKuen to write songs for an entire album which he recorded and released “A Man Alone” producing two hit singles, “A Man Alone” and “Love’s Been Good To Me. His song “If You Go Away” was named “Song of the Millenium” by the French Performance Society. This brilliant, compassionate mind still stimulates the readers of the world and will continue to do so as the centuries unwind.
McKuen is most certainly a highly regarded stand alone poet and songwriter, but when songwriting he has collaborated with such notable musicians as Henry Mancini, Johnny Mercer, Petula Clark, Richard Loring, and Jeri Southern. In his 1972 poetry book “And To Each Season” I have extracted the following excerpts to showcase his style:
From “ÉNTR’ACTE”: We were in love that summer/ and birds about the sky / were singing with themselves,/ carols I cannot remember,/ though I do recall / the colour of the trees / and the things I thought / but never said to you.
From “FREEDOM”: To those who’d jail me / let them try./ My boundaries / and responsibilities,/if they were ever there, / now blur into a single / tie-dyed day.
McKuen’s poetry is on the curriculum in schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries worldwide. He is the recipient of both the Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman Awards for outstanding achievement in poetry. The late W. H. Auden paid him the ultimate compliment when he remarked “Rod McKuen’s poems are love letters to the world and I am happy that many of them came to me and found me out.”
There are poets, and then, there is Rod McKuen!
