Blogging my way through 1968 is a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.  Last week, I went to the library, checked out Listen to the Warm by Rod McKuen, and –this is the tough part– read it, cover to cover.  Forty years ago, I could have eliminated the first two steps, because I owned it, of course; “everybody” did.  Don’t ask me what happened to my copy of this slim volume of poetry.  Clearly it was jettisoned at some point along my way out of the purple haze of 1960s countercultural “culture.”

But was McKuen part of the “counterculture”?  Could someone as wildly successful as this “best-selling poet of all time” be thought of as “counter” to prevailing culture?  Probably not.  By the early 1970s, McKuen had written well over 1,000 songs, which were recorded by various artists and pressed into more than 100,000,000 records.   He became exceedingly rich on music rights alone.  But in 1966, Random House brought out a new edition of a recent book of his poetry, Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows, and it became the 4th-best-selling non-fiction book of 1967, in the year-end tallies of Publishers’ Weekly.   Almost immediately, his next book–Listen to the Warm–was released, and it became the 3rd-best-selling non-fiction book of 1968, just behind the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook and the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, College Edition.  What’s even more amazing was that numbers 5 and 8 on PW’s list of of the top ten non-fiction books of 1968 were two OTHER books of Rod McKuen poetry.  (Three others in the top ten were diet books, the beginnings of a new and mostly unabated trend in publishing.)

McKuen may have been the first poet to have a “brand;”  all of his books, starting with Stanyan Street, were exactly the same size and format, and were designed with a consistent graphic palette.  It’s quite a revelation to visit a library and see them all lined up there on the shelf.  (And, trust me, they’re all there; you have to wonder how often they get checked out.)

Rod McKuen was born in Oakland in 1933; biographical sketches dutifully recite his colorful resumé:  logger, ranch hand, railroad worker, rodeo cowboy, disk jockey, film and TV bit player, and, in the Army during the Korean War, a psychological-warfare scriptwriter. By the mid-1950s, he was performing and writing songs, and then turned to poetry.  By 1968, he had clearly become something of a “craze,” as people in 1968 might have called it–publicity and fame begetting more publicity, more fame, more sales.   McKuen books were extremely popular as gifts (the slim hardbound books retailed for about $4.50).  Even the library copy of Listen to the Warm that I checked out of the downtown Minneapolis library a few days ago seems, oddly, to have been “pre-owned”– it’s inscribed “To Jim, from Grandma Dorothy.”

How to explain the appeal?  What did it mean to be “quintessentially, the poet of ‘right now,’” as a NYTimes profile called him in 1971?  [William Murray, "It Doesn't Matter Who You Love. . ." NYT April 4, 1971].  McKuen was often discussed in the same breath as other contemporary poet-songwriters, such as Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, or he was included in the so-called chansonnier tradition best exemplified by Jacques Brel (whose work McKuen occasionally translated).  The same Times profile noted that McKuen was hugely popular on the concert circuit, drawing as many as 250,000 people in a summer 1970 tour, and that everyone in the audiences, regardless of age, “have the earnest, thoughtful concerned look of commitment characteristic of the middle-class college students and young marrieds who are, as the cliche goes, ‘prepared to work for change within the System.’”   For his fans, his poems must have been accessible but at the same time profound, “edgy,” even a little transgressive and daring (lots of talk about thighs and breasts).  He may have been saying, in his simple, sometimes painfully awkward lines, things that people in those unsettled, changing times wanted to be able to say to each other, but couldn’t:  ”I love the sea/but it doesn’t make less afraid of it/I love you/but I’m not always sure of what you are/and how you feel.”  (From Listen, number 14).  Or (from Listen, number 16):  ”This is daylight.  Turn and face me face-to-face./We’ll go naked in the afternoon/ and then you’ll see I’m only me./Were you expecting something more?//I taste like you–remember/because I’ve been with you so long/because we are each other as we are ourselves./All I have to fight/is what I’ve been for you before.”

More of this now available in your local library…..

And thoughts or memories about Rod McKuen, love, and poetry in the 60s?  Post a comment.