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LONESOME CITIES LTD EDIT
This book is full of great love poems!!
111 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1968
7 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Rod McKuen
147 books90 followersRod McKuen (born April 29, 1933) was a bestselling American poet, composer, and singer, instrumental in the revitalization of popular poetry that took place in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Born Rodney Marvin McKuen in Oakland, California, McKuen ran away from home at the age of eleven to escape an alcoholic stepfather and to send what money he could to his mother. After a series of jobs, from logger, ranch hand, railroad worker to rodeo cowboy, throughout the west, McKuen began in the 1950s to excite audiences with his poetry readings, appearing with such well-known poets as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; during this time, he often used the pseudonym "Dor".
McKuen moved to New York City in 1959 to compose and conduct for the TV show The CBS Workshop. By the 1960s he had achieved fame, far surpassing in sales the works of the Beat poets who preceded him. During the early 1960s he spent most of his time in France. This began his project to translate the work of legendary singer/songwriter Jacques Brel, into English. After Brel died he said, "As friends and as musical collaborators we had traveled, toured and written - together and apart - the events of our lives as if they were songs, and I guess they were. When news of Jacques’ death came I stayed locked in my bedroom and drank for a week. That kind of self pity was something he wouldn’t have approved of, but all I could do was replay our songs (our children) and ruminate over our unfinished life together."[1]
He became an icon across college campuses for his ability to capture in verse the feelings of anxiety, love, confusion, and hope that were common during the Vietnam era. His public readings had the drawing power of a rock concert.
McKuen's commercial success is unparalleled in the field of modern poetry. His poetic works have been translated into a dozen languages and sold over 65 million copies. Throughout his career he has continued to enjoy sell-out concerts around the world and appears regularly at New York’s famed Carnegie Hall.
Edward Habib's liner notes for McKuen's Amsterdam Concert album make the often-repeated claim that Rod McKuen is the best-selling and most widely read poet of all time. This claim is probably rooted in the fact that McKuen's works -- unlike those of Shakespeare or Dante Alighieri -- are copyrighted, and his total sales can be more readily quantified.
As a songwriter, he contributed to the sale of over 100 million records. His material has been recorded by such artists as Frank Sinatra (who in 1969 recorded A Man Alone, an album of McKuen's songs), Johnny Cash who (just before his death) recorded McKuen's "Love's Been Good To Me", Waylon Jennings, The London Philharmonic, Greta Keller, Perry Como, and Madonna. Perhaps his most well-known song is "Jean", recorded by Oliver in 1969 for the soundtrack to the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In 1959, McKuen released a novelty single on the Brunswick label called "The Mummy". Bob Mcfadden and Dor was listed as the artist.. In 1961, he had a hit single titled "Oliver Twist".. McKuen has proven to be a prolific songwriter, penning over 1500 songs. He collaborated with a variety of internationally renowned composers, including Henry Mancini and John Williams, and a highly successful series of albums with Anita Kerr. His symphonies, concertos, and other classical works have been performed by orchestras around the globe. His work as a composer in the film industry has garnered him two Academy Award nominations.
Throughout his multi-award-winning career, McKuen paired his artistic endeavors with a spirit for social reform. Before a tour of South Africa in the 1970s, McKuen demanded “mixed seating” among white and black concert-goers, opening the doors for successful tours by a variety of African-American performers, including Sammy Davis, Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald. He also spearheaded efforts to raise AIDS awareness and fund charities for children and senior
Born Rodney Marvin McKuen in Oakland, California, McKuen ran away from home at the age of eleven to escape an alcoholic stepfather and to send what money he could to his mother. After a series of jobs, from logger, ranch hand, railroad worker to rodeo cowboy, throughout the west, McKuen began in the 1950s to excite audiences with his poetry readings, appearing with such well-known poets as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; during this time, he often used the pseudonym "Dor".
McKuen moved to New York City in 1959 to compose and conduct for the TV show The CBS Workshop. By the 1960s he had achieved fame, far surpassing in sales the works of the Beat poets who preceded him. During the early 1960s he spent most of his time in France. This began his project to translate the work of legendary singer/songwriter Jacques Brel, into English. After Brel died he said, "As friends and as musical collaborators we had traveled, toured and written - together and apart - the events of our lives as if they were songs, and I guess they were. When news of Jacques’ death came I stayed locked in my bedroom and drank for a week. That kind of self pity was something he wouldn’t have approved of, but all I could do was replay our songs (our children) and ruminate over our unfinished life together."[1]
He became an icon across college campuses for his ability to capture in verse the feelings of anxiety, love, confusion, and hope that were common during the Vietnam era. His public readings had the drawing power of a rock concert.
McKuen's commercial success is unparalleled in the field of modern poetry. His poetic works have been translated into a dozen languages and sold over 65 million copies. Throughout his career he has continued to enjoy sell-out concerts around the world and appears regularly at New York’s famed Carnegie Hall.
Edward Habib's liner notes for McKuen's Amsterdam Concert album make the often-repeated claim that Rod McKuen is the best-selling and most widely read poet of all time. This claim is probably rooted in the fact that McKuen's works -- unlike those of Shakespeare or Dante Alighieri -- are copyrighted, and his total sales can be more readily quantified.
As a songwriter, he contributed to the sale of over 100 million records. His material has been recorded by such artists as Frank Sinatra (who in 1969 recorded A Man Alone, an album of McKuen's songs), Johnny Cash who (just before his death) recorded McKuen's "Love's Been Good To Me", Waylon Jennings, The London Philharmonic, Greta Keller, Perry Como, and Madonna. Perhaps his most well-known song is "Jean", recorded by Oliver in 1969 for the soundtrack to the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In 1959, McKuen released a novelty single on the Brunswick label called "The Mummy". Bob Mcfadden and Dor was listed as the artist.. In 1961, he had a hit single titled "Oliver Twist".. McKuen has proven to be a prolific songwriter, penning over 1500 songs. He collaborated with a variety of internationally renowned composers, including Henry Mancini and John Williams, and a highly successful series of albums with Anita Kerr. His symphonies, concertos, and other classical works have been performed by orchestras around the globe. His work as a composer in the film industry has garnered him two Academy Award nominations.
Throughout his multi-award-winning career, McKuen paired his artistic endeavors with a spirit for social reform. Before a tour of South Africa in the 1970s, McKuen demanded “mixed seating” among white and black concert-goers, opening the doors for successful tours by a variety of African-American performers, including Sammy Davis, Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald. He also spearheaded efforts to raise AIDS awareness and fund charities for children and senior
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
February 3, 2025
I bought this book at a library sale...I am so glad to have discovered this very contemporary voice in poetry. As a song writer Rod McKuen has a very developed feel for tempo and flow; you really feel as if you are listing to a song as you read some of his poems. A great 'picnic poetry book' to read with someone special next summer.
February 16, 2008
People all around us...... but still we are all alone. Good read.
April 29, 2017
Definitely one of my faves! I didn't give it a perfect 5 because I think some of the poems were not that related to traveling. I mean, I didn't feel the traveling part that much. Some didn't move me. But generally, I love how the author wrote the poems. Where can I get a copy in the Philippines, please?
May 15, 2023
Probably my favorite poetry collection of the year. I got goosebumps while reading some of the poems.
April 8, 2016
I loved the book (got it free from my sister who bought it for a dollar at a thrift shop and never read it, gave it to me--inside the cover it is stamped with the name and address of a local old-folks' home). As I read, I felt like I was traveling with McKuen on his journeys--the common human, feeling the rawness of the road, love, sex, life, death, beginnings and endings, loneliness, insecurity, disappointment, excitement, hope, nature, adjustment, determination, appreciation, musing, irritation, the circle of life, restlessness, the bucket list that never fills because there is a hole in it. It is expressed from a masculine viewpoint but the same feelings that I, a woman, have and have had and will probably always have.
April 3, 2019
I am torn in giving this book of poems (and really any book of McKuen’s poems) a star rating. He was, in short, a terrible poet. Yet, I adore him. When he writes of riding a horse with “one wedded groin” or “invisible love bombs,” it is truly awful. What he does to the English language is unforgivable, but I do forgive him because he does it with such certainty and passion. I give him full credit for tapping into the zeitgeist of the time and exploiting it for all it was worth. Genius, really. But his words are platitudes, the makings of a self-help manual, bumper sticker philosophy. He was, as one of my mother’s friends once wrote in an English paper, the marshmallow poet. And I love him for it.
May 13, 2020
Just the latest, my third, in a series of Rod McKuen poetry books that I'm reading this year. While they're just meaningless gibberish from an unknown '60s poet and singer to most people, particularly those too young to understand, these words and the books that contain them are satisfying soul food to me.
March 14, 2022
I’d never heard of Rod McKuen when I picked up his volume at a used book score. I noted his headshot had been taken by Frank Sinatra, songs he’d written were covered by many famous artists not unlike Lee Hazlewood, that he had been a movie stunt man and rodeo cowboy [still unclear whether literally or euphemistically, from poems within on that count it remains unclear <_<], scored motion picture soundtracks, and worked ‘as a psychological-warfare script writer during the Korean War’. Also apparently in 1967 he was the best-selling poet in America?! Needless to say, was intrigued.
(Also a voice actor in the Little Mermaid animated television series, and John Lovitz’s ‘The Critic’?!) Apparently the album adapting this book won a Grammy for ‘Best Spoken Word Recording’…. Sounds like Nora Ephron and a Pulitzer Prize-winning US Poet Laureate publicly reviled him, (“The masses ate him up with a spoon, while highbrow literary critics roasted him on a spit”) while Michel Finestein was a fan.
There are chapters dedicated to San Fran, Paris, Venice, London, Cheyenne, LA, Tokyo, and Gstaad. The prologue is about catching trains in the old style the crust punks keep alive to this day. Sort of like Leonard Cohen meets Ken Kesey, with a dash of Truman Capote to liven things up, or Paul Verlaine. Groovy stuff.
(Also a voice actor in the Little Mermaid animated television series, and John Lovitz’s ‘The Critic’?!) Apparently the album adapting this book won a Grammy for ‘Best Spoken Word Recording’…. Sounds like Nora Ephron and a Pulitzer Prize-winning US Poet Laureate publicly reviled him, (“The masses ate him up with a spoon, while highbrow literary critics roasted him on a spit”) while Michel Finestein was a fan.
There are chapters dedicated to San Fran, Paris, Venice, London, Cheyenne, LA, Tokyo, and Gstaad. The prologue is about catching trains in the old style the crust punks keep alive to this day. Sort of like Leonard Cohen meets Ken Kesey, with a dash of Truman Capote to liven things up, or Paul Verlaine. Groovy stuff.
May 1, 2025
This was a seminal book, for me, when I was 21. I listened to his music, read all his poetry which was read by him, and inhaled the depth and breadth of his tensions and my being at that time. - emptiness, sadness, bonding, healing. I forgot about this for years until, on a podcast, one of his poems was read, by him. last month. I pulled his books from my storehouse and reread these from a very different life perspective (age 78). Many of the themes still resonate, still have not been clarified or even addresses. The pain of love and life.
Beautiful, creative and still resonates with me
Beautiful, creative and still resonates with me
December 26, 2016
Potentially, my favorite Rod McKuen collection. Read it all in a single sitting, preferably outside on a gloomy day with a cup of warm coffee.
McKuen travels; McKuen loves. McKuen rests; he watches his love's end. It encompasses the wandering sense present in his other collections, but arranges them intermittently between his romantic observations with a special precision to place and time.
If you pick up any of his books, may it be this one.
McKuen travels; McKuen loves. McKuen rests; he watches his love's end. It encompasses the wandering sense present in his other collections, but arranges them intermittently between his romantic observations with a special precision to place and time.
If you pick up any of his books, may it be this one.
May 10, 2024
Now almost 50 years old, this collection by the well-known poet and lyricist contains poems reflecting McKuen's travels throughout the world, from San Francisco to Tokyo. The poems focus more on personal feelings rather than the places themselves. In more of a "free verse" style rather than more traditional rhyming patterns, I wonder if they have stood the test of time. I suspect not, in my view, as I recognized none of these half-decade old poems.
September 14, 2021
Once again, this is a bit lackluster compared to Stanyan Street/Listen to the Warm. I hate to compare the author to all of his other works, but I think I’m beginning to see that he wasn’t so discerning with how he put together his collections of poetry.
Feels a bit aimless, which you could argue was the point, but it just wasn’t my bag this time.
Feels a bit aimless, which you could argue was the point, but it just wasn’t my bag this time.
July 9, 2025
Contemporary, free-style poetry framed around McKuen’s travels that cover topics ranging from love, loss, war, childhood, loneliness and the environment just to name a few. Sometimes light and fun, sometimes deep and profound, I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.
November 30, 2018
You'll definitely feel the feels with this one.
April 10, 2019
Meh didn't draw me in like his other collections.
November 30, 2020
Again, not holding up as an adult.
I did like these lines from "The Art of Catching Trains":
"and nighttime eats the summer up
and spits the stars across the sky."
I did like these lines from "The Art of Catching Trains":
"and nighttime eats the summer up
and spits the stars across the sky."
June 16, 2023
cowboys, two
manhattan beach
where are we now?
manhattan beach
where are we now?
July 22, 2024
4.5
Almost started crying in the middle of a coffee shop, so cheers to that!!
Almost started crying in the middle of a coffee shop, so cheers to that!!
August 28, 2025
2.5/5
Mid.
Mid.
November 4, 2023
Deceptively simple poems convey some profound insights about the poet’s search for self in myriad mirrors and love among the ruins of relationships he’s left behind in several “lonesome cities” as a single, white man with looks, charm, and privilege.
Favorite Poems:
“Prologue: The Art of Catching Trains”
“San Francisco: ‘Morning, Three’”
“Paris: ‘Two’”
“Paris: ‘Three’”
“Venice: ‘I didn’t run my whole long life’”
“London: ‘Joy to the World’”
“Cheyenne: ‘Cowboys, Three’”
“Cheyenne: ‘Indians’”
“Los Angeles: ‘Boat Ride’”
“Los Angeles: ‘Heroes’”
“Tokyo: ‘Baggage’”
“Tokyo: ‘Suburb’”
“Thirteen Songs: ‘Where Are We Now?’”
“Thirteen Songs: ‘The Word Before Good-Bye’”
Favorite Poems:
“Prologue: The Art of Catching Trains”
“San Francisco: ‘Morning, Three’”
“Paris: ‘Two’”
“Paris: ‘Three’”
“Venice: ‘I didn’t run my whole long life’”
“London: ‘Joy to the World’”
“Cheyenne: ‘Cowboys, Three’”
“Cheyenne: ‘Indians’”
“Los Angeles: ‘Boat Ride’”
“Los Angeles: ‘Heroes’”
“Tokyo: ‘Baggage’”
“Tokyo: ‘Suburb’”
“Thirteen Songs: ‘Where Are We Now?’”
“Thirteen Songs: ‘The Word Before Good-Bye’”
February 8, 2016
This book came into my hands for free, and I had no idea who the author was. Other than the information that was in the book I didn't do any research either, so I probably don't have the appreciation of him that someone else might have who sought this book out or encountered it as a fan.
In terms of the poems, I felt that the first section about the different cities were alright, though some were certainly better than others. The lyrics included in the final section of the book were better, and I could sort of hear the possibility of music in them despite having never heard McKuen sing. I will probably pass this book on to someone else if the opportunity arises, but if it sits on my shelf I might pick it up and reread the last section. Once was plenty for the first half.
In terms of the poems, I felt that the first section about the different cities were alright, though some were certainly better than others. The lyrics included in the final section of the book were better, and I could sort of hear the possibility of music in them despite having never heard McKuen sing. I will probably pass this book on to someone else if the opportunity arises, but if it sits on my shelf I might pick it up and reread the last section. Once was plenty for the first half.
February 4, 2015
Read this again - after hearing about McKuen's death. Straight to the shelves and picked it out - http://www.offthetracks.co.nz/r-i-p-r... - not sure it's great, in fact I know it isn't. But he had something. And nostalgia plays a huge part in my 'appreciation' of his talent/s.
November 28, 2025
Though an excellent concept, the majority of this collection reads too personal, or maybe literal, to connect me to larger concepts. It’s clearly a very personal collection, and I respect that choice. I just don’t think I grasped the full picture.
September 8, 2015
The main emphasis of the poems in this work are cities and the various people who inhabit them. Some are erotic in nature but all show human emotion.
March 16, 2012
NYEHEHEHEHEHEHHE I BOUGHT THIS FOR ONLY 5 COINS. XD
and lol the only point I`ve gotten on this is that they are lonely. xD
and lol the only point I`ve gotten on this is that they are lonely. xD
Read
June 3, 2013I read this book a lifetime ago and loved it. My oldest brother was a big fan and that is how I began my love of poetry.
Read
November 18, 2014I thought that this book had several different poems that are interesting. I didn't like the book much, because I'm not really a poem reader.
August 31, 2025
saccharine, touching the way pop music is
April 25, 2017
My volume was a gift from a neighbor years ago.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews