Rod McKuen, mega-selling poet and performer, dies at 81

Rod McKuen, perhaps America’s most successful poet although not the most critically acclaimed, has died at age 81 in Los Angeles.

Rod McKuen is credited with more than 200 albums and more than 30 collections of poetry.

His work included the Academy Award-nominated song “Jean” from the 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and McKuen’s music for the animated feature “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” was also nominated for an Oscar.

The Los Angeles Times writes: Among McKuen’s commercial success in the 1960s and ’70s were his reworking of Jacques Brel’s song “Le Moribond” for the English-language version of “Seasons in the Sun,” which was later covered by the Kingston Trio and Terry Jacks. Frank Sinatra recorded an album of McKuen songs in 1969 called “A Man Alone,” which included “Love’s Been Good to Me.”

For as much as McKuen seemed to be loved by the general public, that was not the case with critics.

The New York Times writes: “For a generation of Americans at midcentury and afterward, Mr. McKuen’s poetry formed an enduring, solidly constructed bridge between the Beat generation and New Age sensibilities. Ranging over themes of love and loss, the natural world and spirituality, his work was prized by readers for its gentle accessibility while being condemned by many critics as facile, tepid and aphoristic.”

Agencies/Canadajournal