{"id":4435,"date":"2008-05-19T01:53:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T07:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=4435"},"modified":"2017-11-09T13:50:38","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T19:50:38","slug":"book-report-lonesome-cities-by-rod-mckuen-1968","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/19\/book-report-lonesome-cities-by-rod-mckuen-1968\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Lonesome Cities by Rod McKuen (1968)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So J2 didn&#8217;t dodge the McKuen bullet for long.  This collection, a 1960s collection of McKuen&#8217;s lyrics, uses the schtick of travelling, as the sections are titled after cities but only sometimes have to do with them.  Mostly, though, they deal with lost love and alienation.  Not a bad set of topics for poetry.<\/p>\n<p>The pieces aren&#8217;t very image laden, but after the <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/19\/book-report-the-braille-woods-by-ann-townsend-1997\/\" target=\"_blank\">book below<\/a>, this was a bit refreshing.<\/p>\n<p>The book foreshadows some of the self-indulgence and self-consciousness that makes McKuen&#8217;s later work lesser, including poems written for people because McKuen wanted to write a poem for someone.  That&#8217;s a police composite sketch, not a work of art.<\/p>\n<p>Still, one of McKuen&#8217;s better works, worthwhile even if it doesn&#8217;t put children to sleep.<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<b>Books mentioned in this review:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=stlbrianj-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=B000Q7RT4C&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=FFFFFF&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So J2 didn&#8217;t dodge the McKuen bullet for long. This collection, a 1960s collection of McKuen&#8217;s lyrics, uses the schtick of travelling, as the sections are titled after cities but only sometimes have to do with them. Mostly, though, they deal with lost love and alienation. Not a bad set of topics for poetry. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4435"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17382,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4435\/revisions\/17382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}