Books in the news; Lonesome Cities

Alex Boyd on book Saludos a quick look at newly published material and books of current interest. Your host is Alex Boyd in the serials department at the University of Illinois Library. The blurb on the book jacket reads lonesome cities is the newest collection of love poems and lyrics by the American seans and their Rob McEwen. It is divided into several sections and details a man's journey around the world in an attempt to find himself. This statement defines the rough outlines of Rod McKuen lonesome cities published by Random House. But to fail to capture the true nature of these poems. It's so easy to speak of attempting to find oneself. It's a very difficult to relate the essence of such an endeavor. By any measure I don't feel like hearing has been successful in transmitting this feeling. A search to me entails elements of struggle of failure of loss and often times the pain of that accompanies new awareness before any success is achieved. The promise through which the author tries to relate his search artist

to perceptive. And occasionally witty but almost never profound or universal. Many of them can be considered character portraits. Some ever so slightly erotic but few stir the soul or move the spirit to sympathy or new appreciation of the nature of life. I don't mean to imply that all Porter should be said or laden with deep meaning but at least it should have something more than short service scription of sights and sounds. That reminds one more of riddles or nursery rhymes than a poetry. Having said this I must apologize to the many McKeown fans I might have offended. Make your intercepting of a new deity to various sections of the populace. I myself first heard of him a couple of years ago into long playing albums entitled the earth and the sea began to be played quite regularly late at night on a local radio station. The albums were scored by need occur and the lyrics are written and read by McEwen. The combination of McKinney's deep rich baritone voice and full orchestration

creating intense vivid images of the earth and of the sea produces truly great listening. Altogether some fifty million copies of his records have been sold and history books of poetry Stanistreet and other stories. Listen to the warm and lonesome cities I've sold over a million copies. This of course has brought the 35 year McEwen a form a lumberjack horse wrangler bit part movie actor and this jockey a great deal of wealth and allowed him to embark on a new career as a composer singer poet and screenwriter. All of which leads me to believe that although talented McKeown has become somewhat commercialized. His poetry is really anti poetry in a less meaningful brain than that of other of his a contemporaries such as Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti. In fact since the lyrics of his albums are really his poems put to music. Maybe that is how they reached their truest expression. As for me an English professor of mine once told me that a poem is really a very personal thing that pleases you may also please another or many others but

always in a way that is entirely unique to each individual. He added that when you encounter a point which causes you to react in a certain way you will probably never quite understand why. In reading Rod McKinnon's lot some cities I only found one point I was really right for me to be remembered again and again in the years ahead. But perhaps you will be more fortunate. This is been pock Saludos prepared and presented by an exploited and sponsored by the only state library. This is the University of Illinois radio service. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.