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18th & 19th December, 2008
Phoenix 2009 shows announced!
Click here for details.
South African concert dates announced.
Click here for details.
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Rod at home by Chuck Hasse
11/1/08. Copyright 2008 by Stanyan Music Group
A Thought for Today
Love has many faces and one of them is
yours.
A NOTE FROM ROD
Ken continues his down time and so I’ve selected another of his weekly
columns for a look back. It’s totally inaccurate for me to term Ken’s
time away from this column as down time since as Webmaster he still
formats and uploads all of my columns and all other information
including attending to the archives every day for this site. And, for
the last several days he and Eric Yeager have been working on the dozen
or so MP3 downloads that begin here on January 6. As if that isn’t
enough he has already started the promotion and publicity campaign for
my Johannesburg appearances next May. To that end later in the week I’ll
be sharing with you a very amusing photograph he has just sent me. Oh
and Ken, Eric, Jay & I are cooking up a few other surprises for A Safe
Place To Land in an effort to make it even more enjoyable (we hope) for
you.
As Ken accurately reports in his answer to Letter writer Bernice,
“Little Towns And Pretty Places” was the intended title for a book I was
working on for a time. I put it aside for something else and the title
poem wound up in my book “We Touch The Sky," first published in 1978 in
Great Britain followed by a revised edition of it that came out a year
later in The United States.
Speaking of revisions I was up at four this morning and despite a
planned heavy schedule I ended up spending the whole day completely
revising the poem. This makes it a kind of world premiere of sorts since
this will be the first appearance of the “new” Little Towns And Pretty
Places. I think this revision has really nailed it and hope you agree. I
like it enough to have already decided to add it to the book I’m working
on that I hope to complete early in the New Year. As far as I know this
is the first time I’ve shared the title of the book with anyone, so here
goes. It’s to be called “The Athletes in the Old School Annual.” You’ll
probably recognize the title from an earlier poem of mine and it too has
been torn apart and completely rewritten for the new book – but lest you
think the book is made up of older work revisited I take haste to assure
you that nearly all of the poems in “The Athletes in the Old School
Annual” are brand new.
On to This One Does It For Me, Revisited.
RM 12/15/2008
This
One Does It For Me!
Hi Ken,
I'm pretty new to the site but after browsing through some of the
archives it struck me I didn't see too much material from "We Touch the
Sky."
Please would you post something from this wonderful book one Wednesday?
Bernice
You got it, Bernice, and if you keep up the search you'll find a fair
amount from this book published here.
"Little Towns and Pretty Places" is a title I just love so here it is
for your enjoyment. If I remember correctly this was also the title of
an unpublished book and Rod started including extracts from it in his
Flight Plan some time ago.
- first published
July 5, 2006
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ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Thursday 18 December
Christina Aguilera o
"Stone Cold" Steve Austin o
Abe Burrows o Ty
Cobb o
Ossie Davis o
Robert Fryer o
Betty Grable o
Robson Green o
Katie Holmes o
Celia Johnson o
Ray Liotta o
Leonard Maltin o
Anita O'Day o
Brad Pitt o
Keith Richards o
Saki o
Steven Spielberg o
Roger Smith o
Antonio Stradivarius o
Casper Van Dien
Friday
19 December
Jennifer Beals o
Marianne Faithful o
Janie Fricke o
Jean Genet o
Daryl Hannah o
Elaine Joyce o Al
Kaline o
Richard Leakey o
Alvin Lee o
Amy Locane o
Albert A. Marks o
Alyssa Milano o
Edith Piaf o
Tim Reid o
Fritz Reiner o
Sir Ralph Richardson o
Jessica Steen o
David Susskind o
Nan Talese o
Cicely Tyson o
Robert Urich |
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The
summer does not pause to turn upon the blossom of a single rose.
Each of us is nearer to heaven than we
suspect.
The individual makes the difference, not the
pack.
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LITTLE TOWNS AND PRETTY
PLACES Revised |
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Not the world’s
end or its beginning
little towns and pretty places are
remembered lovingly and well,
because we had the time or took
the time to get to know them.
They are the Calentes, Alamo
Junctions and Somerset’s of small
worlds, within our even smaller worlds.
A certain tree calls up a memory of
one whole town and the branch that
broke from it that still survives in some
attic box as the whittled well-worn crotch
of favored slingshot.
What one does not forget is kindness
as a generality. Jawbreakers and red
licorice candy, the monthly present
when the grocery bill was finally toted
up and paid. Shared apple tree, no
matter the side of the fence it grew on.
Rides home from school by strangers,
no thumb up needed, you were afoot
and they were going that direction
even if it took a mid-block turn to
make it so. Then stranger to stranger
friendship for the trips duration.
Somebody’s Kodaked memory of the
skeletal remains of somebody’s kite,
flapping and flipping month on month
from telephone wire graveyard, forgotten
by the child who lost it, but a memorial
for those of us who without its timely
trigger might have relegated to another
head space, a town, a field, a place
that helped to form us.
The hillside village with one church spire
and half a congregation. The other half
had gone to war and not returned, sons
grew, graduated and left for what they
hoped would be pastures greener. No
use in warning them that pavements
out number pastures nearly everywhere
and none of them are verdant. As age
begins too often visits that so perfect
place stored in every memory bank
will wander to the head front without
demand. You know that place, soft
carpeted with bachelor grass, the low
trees garlanded better than they no doubt
were because so much is complicated
brown and grey when we grow up, move
on or move away. In cultivating comfort
age seeks softer shades, truer colors.
How much is recall and how much recoil
in anything remembered we cannot know,
it will not merit much concern. Your own
history and mine should not be left to the
addled historian to fuck and muck about
with. Inspired truth stretched past the fancy
but pitiful imaginations’ fence and boundary
is fact so absolute it needs not elaboration
or absolution to turn the so-so into so.
In the end game your truth will always
trump that of foe, philosopher or friend.
The sheriff’s car went through the window
of the bon marche one day. I saw it and
did not need The Weekly Clarion to support
my sighting. I was present at The Eagle’s
picnic when Aunt Fern’s pie won second
prize and after tasting it knew she had
been cheated getting red instead of blue.
And I remember clouds on certain days
arranged in special ways or in disarray
of such design it had to be deliberate.
These big events are too important to
be left to chance reportage.
In the Scamania’s where I lived, traveled
through or settled in for summers or the
week’s end, the pretty places always
seemed to be above whatever hill or
high school campanile that rose to meet
the near or far horizons. They were so
common as to justify the term. A park is
not a common, only a collection of man
made clutter.
There are skies and people too I have not
seen and do not expect I will in metropolis
or suburb sprawl. Community does not thrive,
is not alive in shopping mall. It takes the local
grocery, barbershop, single table pool hall to
foster gall and gossip that makes local louts
fast friends forever. A corner with no traffic
light to make decisions for you will foster
think time. The wait is seldom long before
a crowd of three begins to share opinions.
It is there you learn everybody has one.
Little towns and pretty places need no
touch ups. they are what they were, are
what they are. But you knew that without
this mans rambling reminder.
This version previously unpublished.
-from "We Touch the Sky", 1978 & 1979.
With major revisions 12/15/08. This version © Copyright 2008 by Rod
McKuen & Stanyan Music Group. |
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