It's arguably a bit thick for NPR's
Scott Simon to call Rod McKuen's lyric works the
cheeseburger to poetry's haute cuisine, although perhaps his
point is fair: he (McKuen) was widely mocked, and also extremely
popular (again, McKuen).
McKuen died last week at 81. He left
behind a resume with over 30 books, close to 70 vocal and spoken-word
albums, and over a dozen soundtracks on it. That's a lot of cheeseburgers. Somebody was buying.
Here's the title track from one of his
soundtracks:
I'll even confess I wasn't a huge McKuen fan myself,
although the sheer output has to be respected. Mostly I like him
because of the fact that most
people haven't a clue who his most vocal critics even were.
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