Poetry Idol

Over at The Guardian books blog, novelist, poet and journalist Ben Myers sparks a slightly weird debate with himself about who the “bestselling poet” of all time might be:

Here’s a question for you: who is the world's most widely read poet? Wordsworth? Shakespeare, perhaps? What about some of the old Chinese masters, whose work has been consistently read for nearly two millennia - people like Li Po? Or maybe he or she is the anonymous writer of a simple greeting card verse or limerick that has made its way around the world?

It’s hard to say and near-impossible to quantify. Judging who is the most successful (if, for the sake of argument, success is measured in number of books sold) living poet is slightly easier. If certain sources are to be believed it's not poet laureate Andrew Motion, nor Maya Angelou, Seamus Heaney, Edwin Morgan, Billy Collins or Derek Walcott.

And then he and comes up with a convincing and pretty enthusiastic answer:

It’s someone whom I’d wager the majority of people reading this haven’t heard of, a man who sold millions of books and helped revitalize poetry in the 1960s and 1970s. A man called Rod McKuen.

If I’m showing my rings by sharing my shock that anyone who considers themselves literate and has read widely in the western world does not know the name -- if not the work -- of Rod McKuen, so be it. (Do you think Myers has also not heard of Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg?) However, despite the slight weirdness of Myers’ positing here and the naiveté of some of his conclusions, he ends up creating an affectionate look back at a writer whose contributions to his artform are beyond calculation.

Myers’ Guardian piece is here. Wikipedia offers up a bibliography and discography here. And, best of all, you can visit McKuen himself on the Web, where he takes the opportunity to welcome guests in a way that only he could:

There should be some silence in this place so thought can harvest things it’s lately caught. I hope that you will take this as a resting space. A bench provided just before the clearing up ahead.