I’m Strong But I Like Roses…
A New Look at Rod McKuen
By Barry Alfonso
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Pop Void #1. I thought it deserved an encore.
Tomorrow
I’ll buy you presents,” muses Rod McKuen in his poetry collection Listen
to the Warm. “Pomegranates and breadsticks, / tickets round the room
and back/ and red red roses like everybody buys everybody.” Much is revealed
about McKuen, the Writer and the Phenomenon, by the last line quoted above.
Just as a romantic automatically purchases the reddest of roses for a
sweetheart, so millions upon millions of sentimentally-inclined bought McKuen
records and books in the late 1960s and early ’70s. If it became trite to use
his work as a valentine gift, there was no shame in that—in fact, it may well
have been a plus for many of his devoted fans. McKuen’s special niche was as a
bard of common-place joys and sorrows. To be among the vast numbers who took
him to heart was an act of beautiful conformity.
Today, more
than a decade after McKuen’s peak in popularity, it may be hard to recall the
magnitude of his appeal. First came his hit songs as a lyricist: “If You
Go Away,” “ Jean,” “Love’s Been Good to Me.” Then came the phenomenally popular
volumes of poetry, the sell-out concert tours, the television specials. His
face became a familiar one: tousled yellow hair, wrinkled brow, sad eyes, a
mouth rarely in a full smile. His hoarse mumble of a voice complimented his
appearance. He was an anomalous celebrity, but a true media star nevertheless.
The jacket copy
of his 1972 book, And To Each Season, sums up his impact neatly:
“Rod McKuen is both the best-selling poet in history and the best-selling
author in this country (USA). In the past five years, his poetry has sold
nearly eight million copies, and his songs, which have been translated into at
least ten languages, have sold more than one hundred million records.”
The
best-selling poet in history—allow the full impact of this fact to sink in for a moment. Might
it be fair to call McKuen, rather than the likes a Bob Dylan or Allen Ginsberg,
the true voice of his era? It’s a justifiable observation, but definitely not a
critically fashionable one. Hand in hand with McKuen’s mass appeal came the
abuse of intellectuals and tastemakers, who were positively enraged by his
success.
How could this
shy, profoundly mellow man stir up such hostility? By reminding those of
“culture” that the aesthetics of the average man were still rooted in the
primal emotions: excessive sentimentality, self-pity, Christian guilt, torpid
frustration. English teachers might praise “The Waste Land” and counterculture
hipsters point out the weighty significance of Blonde on Blonde,
but, for millions of “ordinary folks,” these sorts of works had nothing
meaningful to offer. Instead, they took to heart such observations as the
following: “Your smiles were bright as birthday wrapping paper/ your touch was
like the angel cake you tried to bake but couldn’t”; “I wish I knew a new
lullaby? That began with love and ended with love / and had only love in
between....”
Highbrow TV
personality Dick Cavett was once quoted as describing McKuen as “the most
understood poet in the world.” Most likely this was meant as a witty insult —in
any case, it makes clear the elitist bias of the critics and academics. To
laugh at a writer for his ability to communicate serves to ridicule his
audience as well. This is worse than snobbery—it’s irrelevant. McKuen’s
popularity in the late 60s and early 70s is a sociologic fact of great
significance. It transcends mere questions of “taste.”
Still, there is
something to be learned by delving into the specific charges his detractors
made against him. Louis Coxe’s review of McKuen’s Twelve Years of
Christmas and In Someone’s Shadow printed in the
January 3, 1971 issue of New Republic, contains some of the
important ones. “What are these poems for?” Cox grumbles. “They are poems to
screw by, for one thing, and to masturbate to .... The poems make no
demands.... What Mr. McKuen guarantees is that a certain California sexual
day-dreaming can be yours for the asking even if you do move your lips rapidly
as you read.... Mr. McKuen is no dope and knows very well what he is doing:
i.e., weeping nostalgically all the way to the bank or broker’s.”
Let’s examine
this indictment. The comment about the use of poetry as an aphrodisiac prompts
the logical question —what’s wrong with that? The same may be asked
concerning the undemanding quality of McKuen’s work. Why can’t art be valid for
its functional value? Using word on the printed page to induce orgasm (or even
mild arousal) is as defensible as pondering them for intellectual fodder. And,
considering the demands that job and home life make on most people every day,
why does art have to be a further imposition on one’s frayed nerves and taxed
brain? If these sound like spurious or bizarre remarks, it’s only because
“smart people” don’t often make them in print. Nevertheless, audiences have
used poetry and songs to induce specific, easy-to-predict sensations since the
dawn of man—isn’t that why hymns are sung in church?
Coxe’s final
jab—that McKuen was only in the writing game for money—is hardly worth
responding to. The statement by Jesus regarding those free of sin casting
stones is worth recalling here. McKuen’s royalties no more destroy his
credibility than they invalidate the responses of his fans. If he wrung tears
and coaxed smiles, his work accomplished its ends, just as a bottle of aspirin
that relieves headaches may be called effective no matter how much profit the
drugstore made from selling it.
With the
typical lines of attack used against McKuen dealt with, there are some further
aspects of his songs and poems worth discussing. Despite the undeniable
commonality of his work (and this is in no way intended as a criticism), there
are idiosyncrasies and paradoxes to be found in both the man and his writing.
The most obvious is the sense of alienation and fatalism found in so many of
his recordings and books—how odd for a man so apart from the crowd to be
embraced by so many. Again and again, he talks about “loners” and “single men”
who cannot sustain contact with anyone for very long. Melancholy, resignation
and defeat are reinstated again and again until the reader/listener wonders why
McKuen bothers reaching out to others at all. Appropriately, his last major hit
in America as a song lyricist was Terry Jacks’ 1974 version of “Seasons in the
Sun,” a dying man’s farewell to the world. McKuen’s stylistic tendencies
reinforce this sense of disappointment and wistful pessimism. His language is
conversational—and, as in a conversation, remarks in unadorned language can
convey tenderness and pathos (perhaps, in part, because of their sheer
ordinariness). Clichés are delivered with a natural ease, used the way they
were meant to be used. Often, his chains of associated images are so familiar
that they almost appear to “found art.”
One example
from the collection, Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows, serves to
illustrate this. “I know that love is worth the time it takes to find,” McKuen
consoles a friend in the poem. “Think of that / when all the world seems made
of walk-up rooms / and hands in empty pockets.” Choosing “walk-up rooms” and
“empty pockets” as symbols of loneliness rather than more exotic images helps
to depersonalize the writer and bridge the gap between him and his (largely)
unsophisticated readers. Using commonplace language taps into something deeper
than the unconscious -- it’s almost writing from beyond human thought.
McKuen taps into something akin to the Collective Unconscious by the use of
vernacular speech and workaday imagery.
When the otherworldly
does intrude into McKuen’s writing, it takes on an incongruously commonplace
shape. The Sky, the third LP from a series of recordings with
composer Anita Kerr, contains several examples of spirituality from a
man-in-the-street perspective. In “The Butterfly is Drunk on Sunshine,” he has
a vision of angels walking the Earth at a lazy pace, “all in white” (of
course!). The Lord himself is depicted in “Mr. God’s Trombones” as ruling over
a heaven resembling “a wide grey football field filled with pretty clouds.” The
mood of these two songs (enhanced by Kerr’s dreamy-drowsy music) is drowsy,
comforting, not “serious” but not intentionally ludicrous either. It’s
reasonable to say that, in McKuen’s conception, God and his minions are no more
or less remarkable than a nice cup of hot coffee. (In the 1920s, advertising
executive Bruce Barton wrote a hugely popular novel called The Man
Nobody Knows, describing Christ as the prototype for the successful modern
businessman. At one point, he reminds the reader that Jesus’ physical
appearance went unrecorded, then, apparently accidentally, refers to the Savior
as having blue eyes. Similarly, McKuen, when he must portray God, seizes upon
descriptions that reflect the view of the ordinary man or woman rather than the
exalted mystic.)
It is possible
to overemphasize McKuen’s lack of technique as a writer. There are certainly
devices he relies upon to underscore his ideas. One of the most frequently
employed is the listing of everyday objects, then ending with an emotion
eliciting word. “A Patch of Sky, Away from Everything,” from the Sky album,
contains a typical example: “You move through the house / Sweeping down the
bedroom with your eyes / Like sun on Sunday / But more like—you.” Or in a Stanyan
Street poem: “You’re filled completely this first November day / with
Sausalito and sign language / canoe and coffee / ice cream and your wide eyes.”
And this, from one of his most famous works, “A Cat Named Sloopy”: “Every night
she’d sit in the window / among the avocado plants / waiting for me to come
home / (my arms full of canned liver and love).” If they were aware of these
obvious stylistic mechanisms, I doubt that many McKuen devotees held such
devices against him. A little awkwardness of speech made him seem more
fallible, and therefore more likable.
McKuen’s
writings, then, are as full of contradiction as day-to-day living itself. His
conflicting love/hate expressions gave him the aura of a romantic realist,
someone who’s “been through it all” but still wants to care. This description
also fits the persona of another much-loved figure—Frank Sinatra. The “Chairman
of the Board” identified enough with the poet’s work to record A Man
Alone, an entire album of McKuen songs, in 1969. Despite the surface
incompatibility of the two, it was a highly appropriate match-up.
Sinatra has
been termed, among other things, a “saloon singer”—songs like “One For My Baby
(and One for the Road)” and Films like Pal Joey established an
explicit connection between “Ol’ Blue Eyes” and the bleary sentimentality of
the tavern. It’s worth noting that McKuen identified with the European chansonnier tradition
of Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf. Marlene Dietrich, the archetypal cabaret
singer, was a great fan of his. Despite the frequent outdoor settings of
his songs, McKuen’s sensibility is more compatible with cocktail lounge
ambience. The emotional states induced by alcohol, then, provide a common
ground between him and Sinatra.
When
intoxication takes effect, even a self-consciously masculine figure like
Sinatra finds it possible to call himself “a man who listens to the trembling
of the trees / With sentimental ease.” Beyond such gentle poesy, there’s a
current of disillusionment and impotent anger running through A Man
Alone. In “From Promise to Promise,” Sinatra confesses his hurt in the face
of petty lies told by newsboys and laundrymen. Life is so wearying that, in
“Some Traveling Music,” he ponders heading for an island “with a mess of
records and a ukulele,” where he can just sit “strummin’” (would Louis Coxe
find this an onanistic reference?) and “thinkin’.” It’s interesting to consider
the similarities between the attitudes expressed in these songs and Sinatra’s
own public posture in the early ’70s. Formerly identified with the Kennedy family
and New Frontier liberalism, Sinatra evolved into a vocal Nixon Administration
supporter. The resentment and bewilderment expressed on A Man Alone have
their political parallels in the singer’s hostility towards student unrest and
the anti-war movement.
The above
relates to McKuen’s own ambivalence towards the young. In a December 1972 Saturday
Review interview, he stated: “I don’t consider myself a spokesman for
the young, although I do strongly identify with them. I wouldn’t mind turning
the country over to the kids today.” (McKuen was 39 when he made this comment.)
As expressed in a number of his writings, this ‘“identification” was not an
uncritical one, at least towards the more unconventional youth of the time.
“The Mud Kids,” found on McKuen/Kerr LP The Earth, portrays hippies who
“BB gun the street lights, roll the old bums in the park and build doll houses
out of sugar cubes instead of Lincoln Logs….” A few lines later, he blames poor
upbringing for such delinquency and concludes, “Maybe they [the kids] will make
it [the world] better.” Clearly, he did not aim to appeal to the Turned-On
Generation—if he could sympathize with hip alienation, he spoke more for those
who lived conservative lifestyles. “These are the days of the dancing—six feet
apart,” he comments in a poem found in Listen to the Warm. “Let’s
not wear mustaches and funny clothes / .... They can keep their butterfly
collections / their nineteen-thirties songs and one-room trips.”
McKuen’s
constituency was not that of the trendy or fashionably radical. This doesn’t
mean that it was primarily middle-aged either—press descriptions of his
concerts indicate that he had many, many young admirers. It’s also clear that
his devotees were not among the so-called counterculture. The term “Silent
Majority,” used back in the Nixon days to describe the quietly-conservative
segment of America, may be applied to his audience as well. (According to one
music executive, the target record-buyer for a McKuen album was an airline
stewardess.)
“Rod McKuen
comes out and says what people have been trained not to say,” an associate of
the poet’s commented in the April 4, 1971 issue of The New York Times Magazine. “Some guys bring their girls
to Rod’s concerts as a way of telling them how they feel.” This is a remark
worth considering—in fact, I think it should be taken completely literally. One
reason why millions of supposedly “ordinary” people loved McKuen is that he
avoided ten-dollar words and obscure imagery in his work – in that sense, he
was no more “poetic” than they were. So much of what he said they themselves
could have said just as well and in the same words, if they only had the
self-confidence to do so. If what he created was not poetry (as the critics
claimed), then it’s because “true poetry” is the province of a particular elite
in the contemporary world. McKuen served as the embodiment of a lifestyle
and reality held to be drab and outré by the literary
establishment—thus, his true role was as a soldier in a cultural class war.
McKuen’s
audience identified with his relaxed, casual image because it implied something
more meaningful: resignation. Unlike bohemians, campus radicals and
others of their ilk, the common folk have little opportunity to break out of
their mundane living patterns. Mind-expanding drugs are not an acceptable way
of altering their reality (though alcohol can be to a limited degree). All that
is left for them is to examine the minutiæ of a modern consumer society over
and over again with a mixture of affection, confusion and fear. Nostalgia
for a long-lost past figures into these longings as well—a return to simpler
times, perhaps to the tranquility of the prenatal state. McKuen phrases like
“listen to the warm” and “caught in the quiet” suggest more than placid
introspection. In an increasingly meaningless world, the security of the womb
is the last refuge for those seeking solace.
Short of
suicide or madness—options that few would consciously choose—a way out can only
be provided by the temporary balm provided by a McKuen. To callously denigrate
those who read his work is to attack people in pain. What sort of a planet do
we live on where “artistic standards” take priority over human suffering? Is it
any wonder that the much abused “Average Joe” despises the intellectual? In his
gut, he knows full well that the intellectual would let him die in the street
rather than compromise “art.” Perhaps McKuen did “weep all the way to the bank”
as he considered the success of his verse. Maybe he did bottle and
merchandise “love” like a cheap patent medicine. If he granted one lonely soul
relief for a few minutes, he is a humanitarian and his enemies are sadists.
Have you ever
been lonely? Have you ever lost a friend and felt that all mercy had been
extinguished from this world? And have you ever felt reassured to know that at
least one man understands your condition? Then you can comprehend why Rod
McKuen became the best-selling poet in history. And if you would still think
his work has no value, perhaps you don’t deserve anyone’s love. It’s a petty,
boring and futile life we lead. Listen to the warm, and endure.
More about Barry Alfonso.
