Rod McKuen

One of the best-selling American poets of the '60s, Rod McKuen also achieved considerable success as a singer, songwriter and soundtrack composer in a varied career which alienated critics but enthralled the general public. Typically dealing with themes of love and loss, McKuen's unashamedly sentimental brand of poetry first found an audience during the Beat Generation, a period in which he also recorded several pop albums for Decca and appeared in various rock and roll pictures. After moving to France in the early '60s, McKuen helped to raise Jacques Brel's international profile with a number of hit English-language adaptations, released a string of collaborative records with Anita Kerr and earned consecutive Oscar nominations for his work on "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1969) and "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" (1970). Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Dusty Springfield were just some of the names who would go on to tackle his work, but it was as a poet where McKuen's talents truly flourished, and by the time he announced his live retirement in 1981, his book sales were fast approaching an astonishing 60 million.