1933–2015 · American poet, singer-songwriter and composer
Rod McKuen (born Oakland, 29 April 1933; died Beverly Hills, 29 January 2015) was one of the best-selling poets in American history, with collections such as Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows and Listen to the Warm reaching an audience most poets never see. He wrote more than 1,500 songs and released around 200 albums, selling over 100 million records, and his English versions of Jacques Brel’s songs turned several of them into international hits. Critics were often unkind about the verse; audiences were not, and for a stretch of the late 1960s and 1970s his readings filled concert halls — which is where this sentence was heard, night after night, as his closing line.