Rod McKuen(1933-2015)

Although a favorite target of both critics and non-admirers, who have routinely dismissed his verse as not much above the level of greeting-card poetry, he is the most financially successful poet of all-time. At the height of his popularity (roughly 1967-1973), his books, such as "Listen to the Warm," "Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows," and "In Someone's Shadow," regularly appeared on the best-seller lists and sold in the millions, as did his albums, primarily for RCA Victor and Warner Brothers Records.