Wednesday 11th October, 2006
Details of Rod at The
Luckman in November - click here
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A Thought for Today
Merely wishing is for amateurs. The professional works for
what he gets.
This
One Does It For Me!
Ken,
All of us, of course, fell in love with Stanyan Street—but I’ve never
heard the background on that poem.
Is there a story?
Suzanne Pigottt
I'm sure there's a story,
Suzanne, and I'm just as sure Rod won't be sharing it with us anytime
soon. It's a private story and Rod has always been reluctant,
understandably so, to divulge names, places, times and dates associated
with one of his most memorable pieces.
The following excerpts from
past Flight Plans might help, though. Firstly a piece I wrote in
response to a similar question and then Rod's introduction to The Rod
McKuen Omnibus in which he explains a little bit about the book Stanyan
Street.
I'm not sure if Rod actually lived on Stanyan Street but as we all know he
certainly spent time there and I'm guessing that would have been during
the early 60's. Special meaning? Well, it was a very special love affair.
One point of interest is that Rod is on record as saying that only two
people know the exact location of that little house on Stanyan Street.
Author’s Introduction - The Rod McKuen Omnibus
Twelve years elapsed between the publication of my first book, And
Autumn Came, and my second, Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows. The former
was a diary. I have used the diary device in three subsequent volumes
because I feel it an easy and logical way for a book of poetry to have
form. Stanyan Street is a collection of poems written during those
twelve years. In some respects it is the foundation that many of my
subsequent books were built on. I must admit that I don’t often like the
‘collected poems’ form. I feel each book should have a premise. A
beginning, a middle and an end. Even in assembling Seasons in the Sun I
used the sun months as a format, so that while the book is indeed a
collection it also has its own identity.
The books in the Omnibus could not be more different. Stanyan Street a
collection, Listen to the Warm a diary and a sequence of ‘social’ poems
and Lonesome Cities, short descriptions of favored places.
While my experiences on Stanyan Street affected me for a dozen years
afterwards, I am finally breaking from those influences and beginning to
write in a different style. Listen to the Warm relates primarily to one
specific situation. Concerning Listen to the Warm, I am most often
asked, ‘Was there really a cat named Sloopy?’ Yes, and what is set down
about Sloopy, and the other night people in my life, is written exactly
as it happened.
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concerts and appearances.
ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Catlin Adams o
Joseph Alsop o
Art Blakey o
Steen Steensen Blicher o
Zev Bufman o
Joan Cusak o
Dawn French o
Martha Graham o
Daryl Hall o
Henry John Heinz o
Sawao Kato o
Ron Leibman o
Elmore Leonard o
Franz Liszt o
Luke Perry o
Charles Revson o
Jerome Robbins o
Eleanor Roosevelt o
Michelle Trachtenberg o
Dottie West o
Sir George Williams o
Steve Young |
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Be glad of
competition. Without it you will never be unique.
Temper ought to be tempered with compassion.
Energy implies purpose.
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STANYAN STREET
for Glenn and Ellen, Jocelyn and Tony, Flo and Eddie and... |
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1. You lie bent up in embryo sleep
below the painting of the blue fisherman
without a pillow.
The checkered cover kicked and tangled on the
floor
the old house creaking now
a car going by
the wind
a fire engine up the hill.
I've disentangled myself from you
moved silently,
groping in the dark for cigarettes,
and now three cigarettes later
still elated
still afraid
I sit across the room watching you -
the light from the street lamp coming through the
shutters
hysterical patterns flash on the wall sometimes
when a car goes by
otherwise there is no change.
Not in the way you lie curled up.
Not in the sounds that never come from you.
Not in the discontent I feel.
You've filled completely
this first November day
with Sausalito and sign language
canoe and coffee
ice cream and your wide eyes.
And now unable to sleep
because the day is finally going home
because your sleep has locked me out
I watch you and wonder at you.
I know your face by touch when it's dark
I know the profile of your sleeping face
the sound of you sleeping.
Sometimes I think you were all sound
kicking free of covers
and adjusting shutters
moving about in the bathroom
taking twenty minutes of our
precious time.
I know the hills
and gullys of your body
the curves
the turns.
I have total recall of you
and Stanyan Street
because I know it will be important later.
It's quiet now.
Only the clock,
moving toward rejection tomorrow
breaks the stillness.
2.
I have come as far away
as means and mind will take me
trying to forget you.
I have traveled, toured
turned a hundred times in the road
hoping to see you rushing after me.
At night,
though half a world away,
I still hear you sigh in several sizes.
The breathing softer when you're satisfied.
The plip-plop body machinery back to normal.
remembering how warm you are
and how defenseless in your sleep
never fails to make me cry.
I cannot bear the thought of you
in someone else's arms
yet imagining you alone is sad.
And in the day
my mind still rides the bridge
from Sausalito home.
I do not think
me and San Francisco
will be friends again
we share too many troubles.
Stanyan Street and other sorrows.
3.
We try so hard to make each other frown
I sometimes wonder
if we haven't been together much too long.
The words that work the wonders are so few
that they seem foolish anymore.
Is this a kind of loving too,
a chocolate bar that tastes good at the time
but kills the dinner later on ?
Could be our appetite will go
till even memory's not a feast.
But there are times
when you can smile in such a way
that I'd forget a ten year war
and lie down in your shadows' shadow
and live on sounds your stomach makes.
In these brief times
I could die against your side
and never make a warning sound
content to suffocate
within the circle of your back.
4.
Three years
( or maybe
four )
have moved beneath the San Francisco wreckers
and their yard-long hammers.
Their caterpillar treads that transform brick
to dust-red powder.
Those giant cranes
that slice a roof down
with a single swing.
Some have never known the wreckers' rattle.
Those houses on Pacific that march toward
posterity
restored by dilettantes from Jackson Square
painted up like aging actresses
with eye-shadow windows and rouge-red doors.
Some have had collections taken up
petitions passed from hand to hand.
Their widows walks scraped free of dirt
and green grass planted where the weeds once grew.
These houses almost shiny new
that crowd Nob Hill
and marched down Lombard in a row
were saved to show the glory of the past.
There was a house on Stanyan street
that took a single day to wreck
and that includes an hour spent
at tin-pail lunch on sandwiches and beer.
They carted off the timber and sold it by the
pound.
The bricks at least, ten cents a piece,
now make a Marin garden wall.
But there is little salvage to be had
in bent and broken nails
and things that might have been
if I'd had wiser eyes
or been a fisherman
in blue.
- from "Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows", 1966 |
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