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NauenThen

I never thought I would ever write about Rod McKuen

I was too young to be mesmerized by Rod McKuen. I came along when he was reviled for being popular & terrible, & I jumped right on the bandwagon of sneer. He had no defenders in my hip little East Village gang of poets. I was busy recoiling from anything that seemed corny or sentimental, in case anybody thought I was corny or sentimental.

If he'd been a bad writer without being successful, no one would have cared. But as Aram Saroyan said in "Rod’s Lonely Night," (a piece that Michael Lally, in  Read More 
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