Talk:Rod McKuen

Believed dead
I was convinced Rod McKuen had died some years ago, but apparently not. Deb 21:37, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Thank God he hasn't, simply the best singer/songwriter ever try his haunting Adaggio for harps and strings, awesome! saw him some time ago in Bristol UK wonderful evening. Steve Addy Bristol UK User:82.45.21.103 05:00, 30 October 2005

F Ronald Gross, ghostwriter for McKuen
I notice that the article states that Rod McKuen "has proven to be a prolific songwriter, penning over 1500 songs"; however, I learned last night, that McKuen actually used many uncredited ghostwriters of which my cousin was one. Not only were my cousin's songs performed by McKuen but by many others...yet only McKuen has received the credit. No wonder my cousin was never able to get his songwriting career off the ground back in the 70's. I am not too familiar with McKuen's work but now have to wonder...which songs are actually his??? EAE, California User:204.109.29.5 19:23, 25 January 2006
 * This would be interesting to follow up on...post a message on his flight blog on the external links on his page Doc 14:29, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Edits 8/14/09
Rod McKuen deserves a better fate than this hagiographic article allows him. His achievements are significant but are not well served by a uniformly adulatory article, much of which is cribbed from his own website and none of which deals with the very real and very permanent rejection of his published books as serious poetry. Try to find him in the Norton Anthology, for example.

Was he popular? Absolutely - but provide sourcing for the sales figures that is not derived from his website. RM's musical work has earned him even critical recognition, which is supportable. I also believe that Frank Sinatra recorded an entire album of exclusively RM's songs, which should probably be mentioned.Much work to be done on this article. Sensei48 (talk) 16:26, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

76.115.123.46 (talk) 02:48, 20 August 2011 (UTC) Ok I give who was he.?? There is no personal history on this dude.


 * You're right, 76 - at least the lede is one sentence and so small that you could miss it. McKuen sold millions of books of poetry in the 1960s and 70s (selling any kind of book in the millions is remarkable, but poetry....), and the songs he has written have sold millions of records, albums, and CDs. He was a slightly under-the-radar media force of the time because he wasn't much of a performer - more of a writer/composer. Plus there are plenty of people who regard his output as banal trash, popular though it was. Maybe I'll try to rewrite the opening paragraph to expand it and give him his proper due. Sensei48 (talk) 03:09, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Sourcing, 9/11
While some of the edits done recently here have amplified this underdeveloped article, the sourcing and overall "positive" slant are problematic. The Country Music Channel is NOT a WP:RS for a writer with literary pretensions, and the author's own self-promotional website cannot be used to establish matters of statistics and fact. In addition and troublingly - many of the additions appear to be plagiarized - paraphrases from the CMT article, which are in turn largely cribbed (again) from the author's own website.Sensei48 (talk) 02:31, 8 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I rearranged the material so that poetry and songwriting are separated, removed the more obvious irrelevancies and POV, and added quotations from major academics regarding the poetry. The problem with sourcing from McKuen's own site and from a country music television network remains.Sensei48 (talk) 08:02, 8 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I have taken a critical paragraph out of the Poetry section, added some sources, and created a new Criticism section. I too have done nothing about the CMT and McKuen-site sourcing... yet.--Jim10701 (talk) 23:37, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I have looked high and low for a reliable source of information on Mr McKuen, and I have found nothing that did not originate with the man himself. Criticism of his work is widely documented and reliably sourced, but facts about his life and career seem to come only from him. I suppose this situation is not too surprising, since no one seems to take him seriously except himself and his legions of fans, none of whom is likely to have produced a scholarly, well-researched and documented biography of him.


 * No one denies that he was very popular and very successful, or that he significantly influenced popular culture from the mid-1960s through the mid-70s. The problem is that no reliable sources have bothered to examine him with any diligence. His fans are content with idolizing him and his critics are content with ridiculing him; nobody has bothered to study his life.


 * So... what should we do? Having added to and enhanced the visibility of his critics in this article, I don't feel right in then removing all of the positive stuff that made the article so unbalanced to begin with, even if it does come directly and indirectly from McKuen himself. That would leave the article unbalanced in the opposite direction.


 * The only thing I can think of to do is to edit the article and remove anything that is not simple, biographical fact. I will leave things like his leaving home at 11, but I will remove things like the claim that he then went to work as a lumberjack, rodeo cowboy, etc, while always sending money home to his mother. Sorry, but that sounds to me more like the fantasy of an 11-year-old boy than objective biographical fact. In the absence of any contrary evidence, I am willing to believe that he did leave home at the age of 11 and over the course of the following years worked at a variety of jobs; but those specific jobs are just too exotic to accept unattested, particularly for a child.


 * I genuinely feel for Mr McKuen and his fans. I wish there were at least one good biography out there that we could use as a source of objective but positive information about him. Maybe someday someone will write one. Then all the good stuff about him can be reinserted into this article with proper attestation.--Jim10701 (talk) 20:19, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I reread this source, which I used in the Criticism section, and it actually has more positive and neutral information about him than negative. Although it is not exactly a work of heavyweight, peer-reviewed scholarship, and it is very short (2½ printed pages about McKuen, including bibliography), its viewpoint is decidedly more objective and neutral than anything else I can find; it does contain references of its own to relatively reliable sources; and it was written by an apparently reputable PhD and professor of library science and published by an independent publisher; so it is lightyears ahead of CMT and www.mckuen.com as a reliable source. I am going to use it as much as possible to replace the stuff from those sites that no matter how it's edited still reads more like a hagiography than a biography.--Jim10701 (talk) 20:56, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I appreciate the work you've done here and agree substantially, but I think you're piling on a bit. I framed the poetry section into a balanced, 2 paragraph, factual presentation - using the Hoffman article to source positive info (the 1968 fact and the comparison to Sandburg) balancing it off with (in addition to the vituperative quotation I brought in a long time ago from St. James Enc) passages from Nora Ephron and Karl Shapiro.


 * I think that's enough, plenty. We have Solomon calling him kitschy - do we need to add middle-brow and definitely non-academic Newsweek as well? That's what I mean by piling on. Hoffman, as you note, is not a critic of any weight whatsoever - so why extend his remarks beyond the one positive thing he said and that I used into another fully negative passage? What purpose is served by quoting a really huge amount of stuff from Keller, whose Pulitzer was for a news feature, not culture criticism? And in any case, that last sentence absolutely has to go...ticket sales for a concert tour have nothing to do with McK's quality as a poet.


 * When I did some initial work on this a year or two ago, I removed much of the nonsense and unverified claims from the McK site about the popularity of his books of poetry and brought in the Baers passage, as succinct a summary as you'll find of critical reaction to McK. What you've added makes it seem as if you have an agenda to discredit him as thoroughly as possible. I'd be interested to see how a real encyclopedia like Britannica handles this.


 * Moreover - I think all this should be re-integrated back into the Poetry section. Note that much of the article and much of McK's career as been as a songwriter and composer, at both of which he has been hugely successful in pop culture with the songs, movie scores, and albums. "Criticism" as a section suggests an analysis of the man's complete oeuvre, whereas the section discusses - only his poetry. His discography is about 3 times longer than his list of published works, and his music has been received generally very well, in stark contrast to his poetry.


 * Again, I salute your efforts but question whether all the negative stuff is necessary beyond what I had already added. regardsSensei48 (talk) 00:23, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I see your point. I don't have an agenda beyond achieving a balanced article, but I can see that my first stab at it may have gone too far. When I get into something, I get as deep into it as I can as fast as I can, and that will certainly lead to some over-doing. I doubt that's the first time a well-intentioned editor has made that mistake, and I'm pretty sure I didn't violate the cautions against reckless statements about a living person. This article and my involvement in it are a work in progress; the end result, I trust, will be a more balanced article.


 * I am in the process of making an extensive rework, replacing many of the unreliable sources with more reliable sources, including positive and neutral information from both Hoffmann and Keller, among others. (I came here to say some more about the changes I'm making when I saw your comments, for which I thank you.) I have tried as much as possible not to remove any important information but to find more reliable sources for it.


 * Assuming you haven't made changes in the several hours that I've been working on this second stab at the article, you may want to hold off until you see those changes. I will prune the criticism section of some of its excess, but I strongly think it should stand as its own section. Although you're right that it's mainly his poetry that has been lambasted, integrating criticism of him into that section camouflages it too much, in my opinion.


 * A not insignificant part of his fame is a result of the very widespread criticism of him as an poet, so I think "Criticism" is as significant a subject with regard to him as the other section headers that appear in the TOC. I will, however, make it a subsection of the Poetry section, so it will still appear in the TOC but in that specific context. Thanks very much for pointing that out.


 * Although Hoffmann may not be an expert on anything except possibly library science, his (as I said before) is one of the very few independent sources I could find of any information at all on McKuen and his career. And his work is published, and there's nothing I've found to indicate that it is noticeably biased or inaccurate. Let me know if you know of other reasons not to use him.


 * As for the negative quotation from him in my first edit, your Sandburg quote was taken out of context to make it sound positive rather than negative, and I just filled in the context around it. But I agree that his is not the best source for criticism, so I have no objection to taking that out altogether. But I do not think the out-of-context comparison to Sandburg should be left in either.


 * While Keller's Pulitzer is not specifically for cultural criticism, it is for her work as a feature (as opposed to breaking news) journalist, and her article on McK qualifies as feature journalism just as much as does the work for which she won it. That plus the fact that she is on the staff of a major newspaper specifically as a cultural critic (and it was in that newspaper that her article about him was published) gives her enough credibility to replace the more unreliable sources of information.


 * I think I should, though, clarify in the article that she is not giving her own opinions of McK's work but describing what many of the general public think of him. That, in fact, makes her statements more valuable, I think, because they give not just the "highbrow" view but the view of regular people who could be his fans but are not. But I will take the medicine I just tried to give you and add the positive side of what she says and not pick out just the negatives.


 * As to the statement about ticket sales, I agree that it is irrelevant to his poetry, but I'm not so sure it's irrelevant to him as an artist. What I'm starting to think is that the Keller article maybe should be used in some other way.


 * What I think she does that is valuable is give a view of both the positive and negative sides of the popular reaction to McK, as opposed to the academic reaction of people like Solomon, Efron and Shapiro. She really isn't writing her own opinion of him in that article, as a critic would, but giving a broad summary of popular reaction to him by all sorts of people.


 * I think giving a more global view like that would help this article a lot. It would be a mistake to say that the critics all hated him and the common people all loved him, but that's how the article starts to look, and the only reliable source we have for information about that is Keller's article.


 * What I'm thinking now is that the article needs not a Criticism section but a Popular reaction section, or something like that. Something that gives a realistic view of what people in general liked and disliked about his work. It could include praise of the works that were praised, like his music primarily, and criticism of his poetry. It would include some of the vituperative critic comments as well as the valuable and concise summary Keller gives of the remarkably polarized popular reactions to him.


 * What do you think about that? I think we'd agree that the important thing is to make this an article that helps people who come here wondering "Rod who?" get a balanced and realistic idea of who he is and what he did and how it impacted the world. It shouldn't be a place for people who like him to promote him or people who don't to tear him down. It should give as much reliable information as it can in as balanced a way as possible.


 * What I came here to comment on is that I am removing reference to a Pulitzer Prize nomination in Music. I found evidence on the AMPAS and Grammy sites of his win and nominations for those awards, but the Pulitzer doesn't list non-winning nominees before 1980. Although I am leaving in a few things from CMT/mckuen.com, something as significant as a nomination for a major award needs a reliable source. If you can find one, please post it.


 * Thanks.
 * --Jim10701 (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I neglected to respond to your objection to the Newsweek reference. I'm not convinced that it is overkill to say that a highbrow (Solomon) and a lowbrow (Newsweek) both referred to his poetry as kitsch. The fact that Newsweek is not a source of learned criticism, but a reflection of un-learned popular sentiment, means that there were common people as well as academics who thought his poetry was kitsch. Why is it not legitimate for this article to present popular opinion (as long as it is reliably sourced) as well as expert opinion, when the subject of the article is a popular entertainer?
 * --Jim10701 (talk) 04:06, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm too tired to work on this any more tonight. Sometime in the next few days I'll I'll sandbox the changes I'm making and let you take a look before I make them in the article. If you think the article should be reverted in the meantime to a version you're comfortable with, please do so. Thanks.
 * --Jim10701 (talk) 05:55, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * PS- I just noted that I was posting what is below you added a note. As I say here - no reversion at all from me. Let's both see what we can find.
 * Well, that's even more extensive than my somewhat discursive comment. First, I should have pointed out that I was not going to change anything unilaterally, assuming that we would have a collaborative discussion (as we are) to improve the article. If you are willing to undertake the major revision that this needs, as I noted it needed in the 8/14/09 section above, more power to you.


 * The most annoying thing about writing about McK, as you note, is the lack of RS material. His site claims sales of 60 million books of poetry or something like that. I wish we could get authoritative figures - because even though I believe that to be greatly exaggerated, the actual number is in fact in the many millions of volumes sold - a million in under 2 years by 1968, according to Hoffman and Bailey, with his biggest years still ahead of him - 40 million, according to Keller. But Keller's article is still problematic as a source for anything except the random figures that she quotes. Her piece is a newspaper feature, neither an academic article nor a serious study of any kind. It is precisely and explicitly her reaction to McK - discernable in the snide tone - and I would cringe (to use one of her favorite words) to see this offered as a reliable source for anything other than what Keller thinks.


 * There is less of an issue with McK's stuff than she makes out. 40 million units - BOOKS, in a world in which, even then, 100,000 units hardcover sold would make you a pop culture phenomenon - that is self-evidently phenomenal popularity, and McK deserves recognition for that fact, as he does for the possibly even greater popularity of his songs and records ("Seasons in the Sun" as recorded by Terry Jacks is one of the dozen or so records anywhere in the world with certified sales of over 10 million units).


 * The academy, critics, people who know poetry, people of taste - all tend not merely to dislike but to despise McK's poetry, as we both have noted. But that 40 million books sold means something - at the very least that there was less or no controversy about his quality as a poet in pop culture at the time, a time 20 years before Keller is writing.


 * That is why I want to see a strictly objective article here, with a sampling of vituperation balanced with legitimately stunning pop culture popularity. 40 million books, and even if you halve his claim of his songs appearing on recordings with total sales of 100 million units - you have to look at the Lennon/McCartneys and Bacharachs of pop music for comparable figures. I am also concerned because it fascinates me that a guy whose songs were so good in a pop way could be so bad at writing poetry. I knew his music as early as '63 because I was a Kingston Trio and Limeliters (Yarborough was in that group) fan, and both groups (and many other folk artists) did his songs and sold lots of albums with his stuff.


 * Hoffman and Bailey's bibliography will not be of much help - Time, Life, Newsweek, Seventeen - this is pop culture criticism nearly as lightweight as McKuen's poetry itself. I'd offer that we need sales figures for books and records that are factual. These should be presented without qualification or comment. A small and highly selective collection of vituperative comments would allow for balance. But even a statement like "critics hated him" has limited value. Baers and Keller both say so, if we use them, and beyond a couple examples supporting that, I see no need to amplify the criticism beyond that - or given the unavailability of really qualified critical sources, no possibility. regards, Sensei48 (talk) 06:26, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * In the six or seven (or maybe eight, but no more than that) years that I have been reading (primarily) and editing (sporadically and reluctantly) Wikipedia, this is the first time I believe I have actually encountered the collaboration it lauds itself for. Maybe true collaboration does happen somewhere in the inner/higher circles of this Byzantine, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, but all I have ever encountered is manic bullies and (even worse) gangs of bullies, intent on enforcing their pet positions on everybody else and calling it consensus.


 * To be honest, I hate being a Wikipedia editor. I am a Wikipedia user. I am the guy who reads the encyclopedia, not one who writes it. I edit only when I come across errors so disturbing that I simply cannot leave them unaddressed.


 * I am an encyclopedia user because the format is perfect for the way my mind works. I am not deeply interested in anything, not in any subject or activity, not in any person or type of person, not interested enough in anything to want to be an authority on it, or to gather around me similarly focused people so that we can stake our claim and make sure nobody else tries to fuck with our territory.


 * So, regardless of how much I may edit, I will always be a Wikipedia user first and foremost, and I never lose the outsider's point of view. I don't give a shit about the Wikimedia Community, but I care very much about the hundreds of millions of people who come here for information, and I care even more about the billions who ought to come here and maybe would come here if Wikipedia ever got its act together and stopped feeding itself instead of the hungry, ignorant world.


 * My mind is like a puppy. Insatiably curious about everything, it follows its eager, innocent, ignorant nose through the world, chasing off madly after one tantalizing scent and then another. The world of the encyclopedia, with a little bit of information about a whole lot of different things, is like heaven for me.


 * Wikipedia in particular is nearly perfect, in theory. Unlike any print encyclopedia, there is no limit to the number of subjects that can be addressed. And linking between articles means I can start on one subject that happens to pop into my mind and end up several hours later on the other side of the universe, having visited dozens of different delightful planets along the way.


 * I suspect you can see signs of that rash, puppylike exuberance in my edits to this article and this talk page. I get caught up in something relatively trivial and run with it like it's the only thing in the universe that matters, like a puppy with a stick. Then – just as quickly – I get distracted by some new scent and go tearing off after it, forgetting the one I was so enthusiastic about just a few minutes before.


 * There are only two exceptions to my lack of consistent interest in things, only two things I care enough about to try to fight for them despite the nasty playing field I find here at WP. One is the English language, and the other is fairness.


 * I am in love with this language. I love language in general, but I love this particular language so much, so deeply and with such devotion, that I have not yet found time or energy or motivation to learn any other. I studied a lot of Greek and Latin and a very little bit of Italian in school a lifetime ago, and I have picked up more Italian and some French and a little Spanish and Portuguese and Romanian just from watching hundreds of movies in those languages. But English is so rich and so powerful and so delightful that the more I use it the more fascinated by it I become, so I have given up the notion of branching out into other languages in what's left of this lifetime.


 * But very, very, very few speakers of this language are as obsessed with it as I am, so the majority of my edits on Wikipedia involve correcting the language, or the formatting of the text, or the punctuation, or other language-related errors that more creative editors consider trivial but that matter greatly to me.


 * The second most frequent edits for me involve fairness. In life, my obsession with fairness informs my politics, which tends strongly toward socialism. Here, it leads me to try to make articles – and even more the words used in the articles – objective and neutral. NPOV is the single WP foundation I most admire.


 * I remove lots and lots of puffery and manipulative language, because I have a nearly visceral reaction to even hints of them. (I happen to be pretty cynical and misanthropic for a puppy, though, so I am not anywhere near so sensitive to derogatory language, as you saw in my readiness to add it to this article.)


 * It was my obsession with fairness that got me involved in this article on Rod McKuen. To be fully truthful, bits of "Seasons in the Sun" (which I have always hated) started bouncing around annoyingly in my head a few days ago, and I looked to see who wrote it, and here I am.


 * I had never paid much attention to McKuen before. Although I did hate that song, I didn't associate it with him, and so when I got here I was mostly ignorant about him, neither a fan nor a detractor (discovering that he also wrote "If You Go Away" and "Jean", a song I don't hate from a movie I love, were points in his favor). But as soon as I got past the lead section of the article, the folksy, fawning tone in most of the rest of it made me feel sick. I came to this talk page, saw your posts expressing similar sentiments (although much more civilly than I would have), and so here we are.


 * Now that I've got all that out of the way, and now that I see for the first time the possibility or even probability of a real collaboration at last, I must be honest and tell you that I think I've burned myself out as far as Rod McKuen goes. I learned what I came here to learn, and lots more; I made enough of an effort to bring fairness to the article to satisfy that need; and I discover now that I'm just not much interested in going any farther with it.


 * I see now that McKuen, although certainly notable enough to have an article here, really is not a terribly important person, not really worth the kind of intensive treatment I was aiming for in my earlier posts in this section. I understand now why there is practically no reliable source of information on him: if he were significant enough, there would be. It's appropriate to have a relatively short article telling who he is, with less-than-ideal sources; and although his career is in some ways curious, there's nothing about him that requires much study or in-depth analysis.


 * He is remarkable in being a best-selling poet because that is oxymoronic, but he succeeded in it because his poetry is sentimental, unambiguous, unchallenging, easy for a child to grasp in one reading, and wholly unappealing to a lover of real poetry. It is no more poetic than the lyrics of a popular song, and even less poetic than the best songs by other writers.


 * I don't despise him as Keller and many others do, but I see somebody like Danielle Steel as his peer, not somebody like Bob Dylan or even John Lennon or Bruce Springsteen or Carl Sandburg. Writing a lot about how people respond to him and why makes no more sense than treating Steel that way would. Some people like him a lot; many more don't. That's enough.


 * I will give you the link to what I did so far – User:Jim10701/sandbox/Rod McKuen – but it is nowhere near where I thought it would be the last time I wrote about it here. (I don't think I even touched the Criticism section, for example, which I now agree should go back to the way you had it, possibly making your second paragraph a subsection with that heading.) You can check it out and see if any of it looks useful, and then I'll wipe it out in a week or so if I remember to.


 * I will be glad – even eager – to work with you on the article (or any other) in any way you want me to; but I will be doing it more to explore this enticing prospect of collaboration, not because I any longer care about McKuen or this article. It would be for me neither a labor of love nor the acting through of an obsession, but an exercise in collaboration with another person on something he may care more about than I do.
 * --Jim10701 (talk) 06:11, 20 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Wow - that's a wonderful exposition; I believe I hear in it many of my own frustrations about working on Wikipedia. I really only work on a small number of articles, mostly related to music, film, sports, and history. I've often had to deal with the POV bullies, especially on politically charged issues like folk music and the 19th century Indian wars. I take a certain satisfaction in forcing collaboration through relentless and justified reversions, calls for sources, and constant vigilance on the articles I care about. But I always collaborate - which is fairly easy because I, clearly like you, write better than most of the bullies.


 * I have no especial interest in McKuen either, but if you thought the article was fawning when you came by it - you should have seen it a year or two ago. For folks of my age (61), he was a prominent figure for a while, and I think Keller points that out. There's no rush on fixing this up - as the article stands, someone happening by would get the gist of the man's notability and the disputes surrounding him. I'll take a look at your sandbox tomorrow or soon after, ad when I can I'll see what I can dig up for RS. But I won't do any wholesale reversion of anything other than vandalism, and over time I'm sure we can make this thing presentable. regards, Sensei48 (talk) 08:44, 20 December 2011 (UTC) - whose given name is also Jim.


 * How interesting. If your last name is Martin we really do have a lot in common, and if your middle name is Alvin and you were born and raised in Tennessee but escaped, God help us both! Your ability and willingness to duke it out with the illiterate thugs who run Wikipedia amaze me, though. I could not do that, nor would I want to.


 * I'm 63, but for some reason McKuen just sort of flitted around the periphery of my consciousness like a dry leaf on a windy day. I certainly heard of him, but he had no effect on me at all.


 * My interest in music is and always was oddly limited. I loved The Who and Judy Garland and practically nobody else who ever made popular music. I loved Bob Dylan and practically nobody else who ever made folk music or country music or anything like it. I love everything Beethoven ever did but practically no other classical music.


 * I normally think of myself as having no interest in music at all, and I suppose that is true in general. One of the oddest sights in the world for me is people with earphones in their ears all the time. I can't imagine wanting music of any kind pouring in my ears all day – even Judy, who lavishes her extraordinary and selfless gifts directly on me every time I hear her voice and takes me closer to pure joy than anything else in this world, asking nothing in return but that I enjoy myself. The world and particularly her fans badly underestimated her strength and sanity.


 * With the very few people I love who have made music, it seems as if the music is almost incidental to something else I respond to very strongly, something in that person that gets expressed through music but might in somebody else be expressed just as well through some other medium. There's probably a good argument that Dylan isn't really a musician at all but some other kind of artist: not even a poet in the ordinary sense of the word, but something else, something he just is that nobody else is.


 * I have a feeling he would agree with that. His strangely obstinate humility, his inability to define himself, his insistence that he just is who he is and he just does what he does, his refusal to identify with the obnoxious peacock labels like legend and icon that people throw at him all the time and Wikipedians love so dearly, labels that actually would apply to him if they ever applied to anybody, unlike the thousands of mediocrities who get them every day here – in other words, his being the polar opposite of Rod McKuen – appeals to me a lot.


 * I'm supremely comfortable with just letting this McKuen article go and wish it well in its slow and erratic progress toward perfection. I have enjoyed our conversation, and I really do hope you will let me know if you ever want my input on anything. I think it'll be best to go offline, though, since it's pretty clear at this point that WP is irrelevant. Send me an e-mail if you want to sometime and we'll wrestle with whatever we wrestle with outside where the thugs and bullies are afraid to go.
 * --Jim10701 (talk) 21:12, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Seasons in the Sun
The Terry Jacks article says that Seasons in the Sun was released in 1973, not the late 1960s as stated herein. I'm not changing it because this article's author may know something I don't -- maybe Jacks was performing the song live for several years before recording it, and those performances started in the late 1960s? But it's worth looking into. Gms3591 (talk) 11:40, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

No mention of acting?
There doesn't seem to be any mention of the subject being an actor. Was he? Here is a link to an appearance he made in--of all things!--the mid-fifties TV series The West Point Story. Did he have other acting credits? If so, should they be mentioned/listed? Thanks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFMSmd-uEyM

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A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
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 * Rod1970AM.jpg

Biographical edits
Although there *may* be source for him running away from home at 11, no reference is cited. In addition to that, he is clearly living with his mother Clarice, in Oakland, in the 1950 census at age 16. So I've removed this phrase.Wjhonson (talk) 16:13, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Slate article
In case anyone wants to use this in the article. Not my department so I'll just leave it here. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 00:37, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

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 * Greta Keller, Rod McKuen in Vienna.png