8th & 9th November, 2008

Final concerts tonight!
Click HERE for details.

Rod, tonight at Buddy Greco’s in Cathedral City.
Photo by Edward McKuen ©2007 by Stanyan Music Group.

A Thought for Today

Those willing to listen to us will always inspire us.

FROM the¨BOOKS

I BELIEVE IN ONE TO ONE

To those few who know me
my religion is well known.
I believe in bodies
          arms entangling
                    and untangling.
I believe, and I know it to be so
that there are so many curves
                          and hollows
in a single body
               that none of us
none of us
can come to know them all
within a lifetime
but I’ll go on trying.
My faith is sure.
It can’t be killed or stopped
by one opening I wanted
that didn’t open,
by one mound
           that wasn’t soft enough
to ease my head,
by one I sought
but didn’t win,
by a wound of love
so fresh it hasn’t healed.

I believe in one to one
and one on one.
No wine or magic
no hand me-down-Bible
can improve on that.

I believe in spring
but only if I’m rolling in a pillow
or hold some well loved face
is any world green enough for me.

- from "Celebrations of the Heart", 1975

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Catch Rod McKuen live!

Click on the links below for details of concerts and appearances.

ROD McKUEN CONCERTS

ROD McKUEN APPEARANCES

Saturday 8 November

Chris Connor o Alain Delon o Ken Dodd o Leif Garrett o Edmund Halley o Mary Hart o June Havoc o Katherine Hepburn o Jerome Hines o Rickie Lee Jones o Walter Mirisch o Margaret Mitchell o Gretchen Mol o Patti Page o Parker Posey o Bonnie Raitt o Tara Reid o Esther Rolle o Morley Safer o Gene Saks o Bram Stoker o Robert Strauss o Courtney Thorne-Smith o Alfre Woodard

Sunday 9 November

Spiro Agnew o Dorothy Dandridge o Marie Dressler o Lou Ferrigno o Tom Fogerty o Whitey Herzog o Chris Jericho o Nick Lachey o Hedy Lamarr o Mae Marsh o Robert Duncan McNeill o Joanna Moore o Edna May Oliver o Pepa (“Salt-N-Peppa”) o Carl Sagan o Anne Sexton o Sargent Shriver o John Singleton o Sisqo o Kay Thompson o Mary Travers o Ivan Turgenev o Tom Weiskopf o Ed Wynn

-from "Coming Close to the Earth", 1977

Do not be afraid because things happen quickly. Who said we have to take our time.

Science should not cheat imagination, but further it.

THREE AUTUMN POEMS

- “If You Love Somebody, Tell Them” Calendar, 1969

Hill Poem

Too long
we’ve looked
for men to match
our mountains,
another way perhaps
of keeping our eyes
always on the core
and not the apple.

Now that men
of seeming sensibility
have all but pulled down
every worthwhile hill
our priorities should be
               turned around.

Think how it would be,
in California
let alone the world
to find enough new,
or even reconstructed
             mountains
to match those many men
who level knolls
        and pull down ridges
on unsettled stomachs
               or one whim
by signing just their names
       in triplicate.

-from “The 1976 Rod McKuen/Animal Concern Calendar”

Other People's Music

I stay awake by choice
pretending to a pillow,
my arms wrapped `round it,
that the music coming through the walls
is being sent to me.

Then conversation kills the radio.
The pillow falls
and lullabies give way
to distant laughter
imagined movement
forced memory
and semi-perfect sleep.

-from "Fields of Wonder", 1971