Rod mckuen best poems
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Rod McKuen
American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer (1933–2015)
Rod McKuen | |
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McKuen in 1970 | |
| Birth name | Rodney Marvin Woolever |
| Born | (1933-04-29)April 29, 1933 Oakland, California, U.S. |
| Died | January 29, 2015(2015-01-29) (aged 81) Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
| Occupations |
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| Instruments | |
| Years active | 1955–2004 |
| Formerly of | Jacques Brel |
| Partner | Edward Habib |
Musical artist
Rodney Marvin McKuen (mə-KEW-ən; né Woolever; April 29, 1933 – January 29, 2015) was an American poet, singer-songwriter, and composer. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks and classical music. He earned two Academy Award nominations for his music compositions. McKuen's translations and adaptations of the songs of Jacques Brel were instrumental in bringing the Belgian songwriter to prominence in the English-speaking world. His poetry de
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Barry Alfonso
Backbeat Books ($29.95)
by Walter Holland
Singer-songwriter-poet Rod McKuen was a strange, self-conflicted, and tragic figure; an artist of frenetic creativity, he was also a closeted gay man who became trapped in his illusory pop persona as a mellow, lovelorn, balladeer and bard. His complexities do not lend themselves to easy narrative, and his tendency to embellish or outright lie, not to mention his frequent pandering for his own commercial self-interests, leaves one on unsteady ground when trying to explain all of his contradictions. Toward this end, biographer Barry Alfonso tries to separate fact from fiction, and to point out McKuen’s many irregularities, with mixed results.
Alfonso chalks up this obsession with popular acceptance, success, love, and adulation to McKuen’s illegitimate birth, unknown and absent father, and hardscrabble adolescence. This may be indeed one thread of the story, but Alfonso tends to play more partisan sleuth than impartial biographer; the scant facts of McKuen’s childhood create an invitation for subjective overreach. Worse
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Not everyone can go from being an 11 year-old runaway to an internationally recognized poet and songwriter. Yet, Rod McKuen did just that. Although he never really garnered many accolades for his musical performances, his song writing netted over 1,500 songs and the sale of over 100 million record albums. In the poetry realm, McKuen began publishing books of poetry in the 1960s, including such titles as Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows, Listen to the Warm, and Lonesome Cities. His works have been translated into over 11 different languages, and his books have sold millions of copies. In 1968, his audio recording of Lonesome Cities earned him a Grammy award for Best Spoken Word Recording.
For such remarkable accomplishments, one might think the McKuen was professionally trained or formally educated in music or English composition. But this is as far from the truth as one might get. In reality, McKuen ran away from home at the age of 11, after finding that he could no longer tolerate his alcoholic step-father’s violent outbursts. Born in 1933, the young McKuen man
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