Bobby Dylan is protesting and I’m not. —Rod McKuen, 1967 The poet and songwriter Rod McKuen passed away in January at the age of eighty-one. McKuen has practically disappeared from the consciousness of the present generation, but in his time he was one of the most commercial and creative enigmas of late-1960s popular music and poetry—dismissed by serious writers, embraced by the masses, tolerated by the counter-culture folk singers of the day; yet respected by the elite of pop and country music. McKuen’s thirty poetry books sold 60 million copies and were translated into eleven languages, making him the most…